Rashid Khan was born and raised in Pakistan as a part of a hard-working middle-class household. He grew to become a lawyer and stayed in Pakistan after the remainder of his household fled to the west. Ultimately, he was additionally compelled to depart and certified as a solicitor within the UK. He arrange his personal immigration-based apply in south London, beginning in a one-room workplace with a second-hand desk and pc. Because the years glided by, he labored arduous, the apply grew, he opened a second workplace, and he developed a big shopper base.
Within the spring of 2023, the Each day Mail determined to hold out a ‘sting’ operation in opposition to solicitors who had been allegedly selling bogus asylum claims. On 4 and 19 Could 2023, undercover journalists attended at Mr Khan’s places of work pretending to hunt recommendation for a fictitious nephew who had supposedly entered the UK illegally. They secretly filmed each conferences.
The Mail ran its article on 24 July 2023. It was closely slanted in opposition to Khan. It carried an image of him, below which was the caption: ‘Rashid Ahmad Khan (pictured) advised our covert reporter he can’t assist him apply for asylum if he doesn’t say “his life is at risk again dwelling” and advised him to deceive the Residence Workplace.’
This was a gross, and libellous, misrepresentation of what Khan had really stated. If true, it will have led to a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal order placing off Khan – however why let the reality get in the way in which of story? Khan’s places of work had been attacked, leading to a number of smashed home windows.
On 26 July, Thomas Kelly, ‘investigations editor’ on the Mail, wrote to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. That very same day, justice secretary Alex Chalk additionally wrote to the SRA ‘strongly encouraging’ the regulator ‘to make use of the complete pressure of sanctions out there to you’. On the time, the SRA was agitating for elevated in-house fining powers from the federal government: little question its prospects of securing the rise could be all of the stronger if it was seen to behave in opposition to Khan in accordance with the federal government’s needs. 5 days later, on 31 July 2023, with out even bothering to interview Khan or search any rationalization from him, the SRA intervened into his agency, scary his skilled destroy and immediately casting his employees (round 25 folks) out of their jobs. The political strain on the SRA intensified, with senior personnel being summoned to a gathering by dwelling secretary Suella Braverman on 8 August 2023.
After the intervention in July 2023, the SRA refused to concern Khan with a practising certificates. He was successfully frozen out of the occupation and unable to earn his residing. Predictably, his bodily and psychological well being suffered badly. He might do not more than to await his destiny earlier than the SDT.
A phrase about intervention. It dates again to the Solicitors Act 1941, wherein the Regulation Society was given statutory energy to intervene in a solicitor’s apply on the bottom, inter alia, that there was purpose to suspect dishonesty on the a part of the solicitor. Intervention is the nuclear weapon within the SRA’s regulatory armoury. Upon intervention, the apply moneys vest within the SRA to be held on statutory trusts. The SRA could require the solicitor to ship apply paperwork to its nominated agent. In a ‘purpose to suspect dishonesty’ intervention, the solicitor’s practising certificates is suspended. And the prices of the intervention, which are usually substantial, are recoverable as a debt from the intervened solicitor – Khan has already been offered with payments of greater than £100,000. In a phrase, the solicitor and his employees are instantaneously solid out into skilled darkness and the solicitor loses management of the apply’s cash and paperwork. The intervention is publicised within the authorized press, including reputational destroy to the solicitor’s different woes.
There’s a statutory treatment by which a solicitor can problem an intervention within the Excessive Court docket, however it’s subsequent to ineffective. The attrition begins the second that the intervening agent arrives on the intervened solicitor’s premises and takes possession of the apply’s recordsdata. It will likely be weeks or months earlier than a statutory problem might be heard. The lack of management of the apply accounts implies that the solicitor could even lose the monetary means to problem the intervention. And the low bar offered by a ‘purpose to suspect dishonesty’ implies that any problem to an intervention on that foundation is sort of sure to fail.
Till the autumn of 2024, there had not been a single profitable Excessive Court docket problem to an intervention, save in a handful of instances the place the Regulation Society/SRA had backed down and agreed to raise the intervention within the face of a problem. In 2005, Ms Anal Sheikh efficiently challenged an intervention into her apply at first occasion (the problem took up eight days of court docket time) after which misplaced on enchantment.
Since then, I’ve routinely suggested intervened solicitors that it’s pointless to attempt to problem an intervention. Ultimately, within the autumn of 2024, Choose Jarman KC, a extremely regarded Welsh decide, present in a solicitor’s favour on an intervention problem. However one swallow doesn’t a summer season make, and one profitable problem in 75 years reveals solely that all the system is weighted far too closely in opposition to the intervened solicitor.
Khan subsequently didn’t problem the intervention. Involved that the SRA was dragging its toes in prosecuting him nevertheless, he made a novel software to the SDT, in impact referring his personal conduct to the tribunal in a bid to kickstart the inevitable disciplinary proceedings in opposition to him: the SDT declined to allow him to take action.
Khan was finally charged by the SRA with having dishonestly ‘inspired a false narrative to be put ahead in assist of an asylum declare’. He was lucky that his solicitor, Robert Forman of Messrs Murdochs, was very skilled in representing solicitors charged with skilled misconduct.
When first instructed by Mr Forman, I used to be shocked to find how weak the case in opposition to Khan really was. The 2 conferences in Could 2023 had been ‘meet and greet’ conferences solely. There was no retainer: the bogus uncle and bogus nephew had by no means grow to be ‘purchasers’, and Khan had given no authorized recommendation to talk of. By now we had two unbiased, professionally obtained translations of all that had been stated. Taken in context, Khan had stated nothing and accomplished nothing which could possibly be stated to have inspired a false asylum declare. Again and again the journalists had given Khan the chance to do exactly that, and on every event, he had not risen to their bait. The general context of the assembly confirmed that Khan merely wished the potential shopper to offer directions by writing down his story and producing his identification paperwork. His remarks had been taken out of context, to say the least, within the Each day Mail article in July 2023.
I used to be subsequently cautiously optimistic when the case began – all the time greatest to be cautious in litigation, as something can occur. Khan gave account of himself within the witness field. On the morning of the second day of the listening to, the tribunal introduced that it was dismissing the cost. On 14 March, it delivered its written judgment, wherein it concluded: ‘When taken individually or seen in its totality there was nothing throughout the materials seen and browse by the tribunal which might allow it to make an opposed discovering in opposition to the respondent.’
So, regardless of being totally harmless of any skilled misconduct, Khan was ruined by the mixed actions of the Mail, the federal government and the SRA. The Mail was pursuing its personal right-wing political agenda, as it’s entitled to – and if just a few home windows at Khan’s places of work get smashed within the course of, properly that’s simply the worth we pay for a free press, isn’t it?
The federal government in query was ejected from workplace by the British voters final July. Little question the previous ministers who leant so closely on the SRA again in the summertime of 2023 have gone on to pastures new, with scarcely a thought for the likes of Khan. And the politicians had each proper to need the regulator to ‘crack down’ on immigration solicitors, didn’t they?
As for the SRA, as I’ve identified in these pages on quite a few events, however the Authorized Companies Board’s latest post-Axiom Ince criticisms, the regulator is within the comfortable place of being kind of wholly unaccountable to anybody for something. So the unfair intervention into Khan’s apply is simply unhealthy luck for him, isn’t it? Certainly, since his acquittal earlier than the SDT, the SRA has offered him with an extra demand for the prices of the intervention.
However what I’ve written above shames this a part of our authorized system to its core. A tough-working solicitor from an ethnic minority discovered himself professionally ruined by the mixed exercise of three extraordinarily highly effective establishments. Though the case in opposition to him turned out to be threadbare and he was finally discovered to have accomplished nothing flawed, the worth he paid was the destruction of his authorized profession and popularity, harm to his bodily and psychological well being, and the fee of greater than £100,000 in irrecoverable authorized prices to defend himself, along with the six-figure sum demanded of him by the SRA as the prices of the intervention. What kind of justice is that?
Though it’s too late to be of any use to Khan, I’ve a number of recommendations as to how such a basic injustice might be averted sooner or later.
Intervention regime
Allow us to begin with the intervention regime. It was created many years earlier than the courts invented their very own highly effective peremptory treatments, now often known as freezing orders, and entry and search orders. Reasonably than allowing the SRA to behave as decide and jury as as to if there may be purpose to suspect dishonesty, after which offering a just about ineffective treatment by means of statutory problem, parliament ought to as an alternative present the SRA with statutory authority to use to the Excessive Court docket for an intervention order. Save in really pressing instances, the court docket might then present a smart regime by which respondent solicitors can put their facet of the story earlier than it’s too late.
Second, I don’t consider that the SRA wants a statutory energy to intervene on the idea of a ‘purpose to suspect dishonesty’. As far as I’m conscious, no different authorized regulator on this planet has the facility to shut down these it regulates on the idea of not more than a suspicion. The Mareva jurisdiction has a well-established check of controversial case, an actual threat of dissipation of belongings, and the stability of comfort. This could possibly be tailored by parliament to go well with the assorted circumstances wherein it’s really vital for the SRA to have the ability to shut down a legislation agency as a matter of urgency. If the proof falls in need of this, the court docket ought to be empowered to make orders to guard the general public with out really closing down the agency. In that means, the pursuits of most people, the compensation fund, the occupation and the intervened solicitor can all be sensibly balanced.
The current system is much too closely weighted in favour of the regulator. Why does the apply need to be brutally destroyed in a single day, as occurred to the agency that Khan had constructed up over time? Why can not a system be devised whereby the intervened apply can proceed to run, with an permitted solicitor holding the fort, till a decide has decided what must occur in the long term?
Such reforms would have the large extra good thing about offering some much-needed accountability for the selections of the SRA. With out wishing to sound like a damaged file, I’ve been drawing consideration to the SRA’s unaccountability in quite a few articles over time. Gazette readers all the time agree with me however nothing ever occurs to vary the established order.
Would these reforms have saved Khan from the injustice that he has suffered? I wish to suppose so. The Mail may need thought tougher earlier than publishing its article about him. The SRA may need paused earlier than its rush to judgment in opposition to him. And if each of these precautions failed, a Excessive Court docket decide may need taken the identical view as I did after I noticed the proof – that it merely didn’t quantity to a sufficiently compelling case in opposition to Khan to justify closing down his agency. No system is ideal, however I’m positive that we will devise one thing that may be a nice deal higher and fairer than what we have now at current.
Insurance coverage cowl for disciplinary proceedings
Subsequent, there may be the truth that Khan needed to bear his personal prices of proving his innocence within the SDT, a results of the unlucky judgment of the Court docket of Attraction in Baxendale-Walker v Regulation Society, a choice which to my thoughts has accomplished extra hurt than good. Nevertheless, Baxendale-Walker was upheld by the Supreme Court docket within the Flynn Pharma case in 2022 and so is right here to remain. It altered the pre-existing apply of prices following the occasion within the SDT, laying down that the start line for prices when a solicitor is acquitted by the SDT is that every facet ought to bear its personal prices. The SDT rejected Khan’s software for prices and made a traditional Baxendale-Walker order that every facet ought to bear its personal prices.
After the Solicitors Indemnity Fund went below in 2000, and the insurance coverage market picked up the slack, the minimal phrases and circumstances negotiated between the Regulation Society and the insurance coverage trade initially included an obligation upon skilled indemnity insurers to incorporate cowl for solicitors dealing with disciplinary proceedings. Insurers didn’t like this. Some years later, the Regulation Society bought the move on it and the availability was eliminated. Maybe that ought to be rethought. Barristers are in a way more beneficial place as a result of the Bar Mutual will routinely cowl their prices in some disciplinary proceedings. Solicitors need to buy such cowl, which creates a disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Regulators have a tendency to love low-hanging fruit, and a solicitor from a small agency with no PII cowl with which to contest disciplinary proceedings presents a extra engaging goal than a well-resourced giant agency.
Substitute of the Regulation Society because the occupation’s commerce union
To whom might Khan flip when his world was turned the other way up by the intervention? No one. What about his consultant physique, the Regulation Society? Will the Society now take up the cudgels for Khan and search to influence the SRA to not implement its entitlement to the prices of the intervention?
There may be completely no likelihood of that. I frequently learn on social media in regards to the Regulation Society’s ideas on a variety of necessary authorized points, alongside a photograph of whichever potentate holds the organisation’s reins in the intervening time – however I’ve the robust suspicion that few folks take quite a lot of discover. All the solicitors to whom I discuss these issues are unanimous of their low opinion of the Regulation Society as a consultant physique. That’s what is lacking – a real voice for particular person solicitors moderately than the occupation as a complete.
So my closing suggestion for reform is that the Society, which appears unsuited to life as a commerce union, ought to be changed as such by another physique. The native legislation societies look like faster on their toes and fewer supine than the nationwide Society, in order that could be place to begin. Maybe a nationwide affiliation of native legislation societies might present an efficient voice to particular person solicitors and signify the pursuits of the much less lucky.
Within the meantime, if any reader has a vibrant concept as to how Khan can treatment the injustice accomplished to him, please get in contact with me.
Gregory Treverton-Jones of 39 Essex Chambers specialises in regulatory and disciplinary points regarding authorized professionals. He has co‑authored successive editions of The Solicitor’s Handbook
