Solicitors' disciplinary processes: fit for purpose?

The annual reports of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) do not normally make riveting reading. 

But both organisations have recently released reports which should be required reading for solicitors and indeed, for anyone interested in the professional conduct of solicitors. 

This is because they show how the disciplinary process, as it relates to the solicitors’ profession, is changing before our eyes. 

Firstly, there is the revelation in the SRA’s report that the number of misconduct cases that the regulator has brought to the SDT has risen by 40 per cent over the past five years. 

Last year, the SRA took a total of 134 misconduct cases to the SDT, as its report reveals. In 2013-14 that figure was 97. 

Meanwhile, the SDT reveals that prosecution costs have risen by 28 per cent over the past two years alone. Solicitors were ordered to pay a total of £3.45m in prosecution costs last year, up from £2.7m the year before, its report shows. 

There are likely to be a number of reasons for these trends, but I believe an important underlying one is the way in which an expanding number of misconduct cases involve sexual allegations – behaviour which may once have been considered ‘private’ rather than professional.

The SRA is spending much more time and money investigating these types of cases, which may explain the rise in costs orders. As Geraldine Newbold, the SDT’s chief executive officer and clerk writes: “Allegations of misconduct of a sexual nature by solicitors are likely to be an increasing theme for future cases brought by the SRA.”