Before : |
Sir Timothy Le Cocq, Bailiff, and Jurats Ramsden, Averty, Hughes, Le Cornu and Le Heuze |
IN THE MATTER OF THE LAW SOCIETY OF JERSEY LAW 2005
IN THE MATTER OF THE REPRESENTATION OF HM ATTORNEY GENERAL CONCERNING ADVOCATE ANDREW BEGG
Attorney General in person (for 7th and 9th June)
Advocate S. A. Meiklejohn for the Attorney General (for 4th July)
Advocate C. J. Scholefield for Advocate A. P. Begg (for 7th and 8th June)
Advocate A. P. Begg in person (for 4th July)
Bâtonnier for the Law Society of Jersey (for 4th July 2022)
judgment
the bailiff:
1. This is the Representation of the Attorney General in disciplinary proceedings against Advocate Andrew Begg ("Advocate Begg")
2. On 10th June 2022 the Court gave its decision following a hearing on 7th and 8th June 2022 on factual issues to be determined in the disciplinary proceedings with reasons to follow. These are those reasons.
3. The issues that fell to be determined arose out of the representation by Advocate Begg of Mrs X who was the surviving widow of Mr Y who died intestate on 18th May 2017. Mr Y was survived by siblings.
4. We have had the benefit of affidavits from Mrs X, Advocate Begg and Mrs Denise Heslam (an employee of Advocate Begg) and have heard evidence from all three. We do not think it necessary to go into the evidence that they gave in detail save where it directly relates to our findings on the issues before us.
5. Neither do we think it necessary to go into the detail of the dealings between Advocate Begg and Mrs X and instead, for the purposes of this judgment, draw to a significant extent on the summary of the factual background provided in the Attorney General's submissions.
6. Mrs X applied for the grant of letters of administration with regard to Mr Y's estate in August 2017 which was granted pending filing of an affidavit with regards the nature of the separation between Mrs X and the late Mr Y who had lived apart for some 15 years prior to the latter's death. Accordingly, there was a question as to her rights on intestacy and whether or not Article 8 of the Wills and Succession (Jersey) Law 1993 applied. The siblings lodged a caveat on the estate on 10th September 2017.
7. Negotiations then took place in October 2017, between Mrs X represented by Advocate Begg and the siblings represented by BCR Law. There was broad agreement at an early stage of the negotiations that there would be an equal division between Mrs X on the one hand and the siblings on the other with Mrs X receiving a monetary sum that would reflect half the estimated value of Mr Y's estate net of any debts he owed to the siblings. Mrs X would surrender any further rights against Mr Y's estate and, indeed, the estate of a deceased sister of the late Mr Y and, further, against the siblings in the share of her estate which was due to go into Mr Y's estate. It was also proposed that Voisins Executors Limited (Voisins) would be appointed to administer the estate.
8. The negotiations did not proceed entirely smoothly and Mrs X through Advocate Begg sought an early distribution before the estate of Mr Y was administered. Correspondence continued back and forward until 9th April 2018. BCR appeared to be responsible for some of the delay during the early stages of the negotiation.
9. A draft agreement was sent to Advocate Begg on 30th March 2018 which he sent to Mrs X on 6th April 2018. From 9th April 2018 there was no substantive correspondence sent by Advocate Begg to BCR until April 2019.
10. On 27th March 2019, BCR sent an email marked "without prejudice" seeking to progress the matter. The email was sent to an email address Andrew.begg@begg-law.com and Advocate Begg responded on 11th April 2019 but with observations on a previous draft agreement rather than a response to the email of 27th March 2019. BCR chased communications and a substantive response was sent on 29th May 2019. A revised draft was produced the following day by BCR but nothing further was received from Advocate Begg after 30th May 2019. As a result of this the siblings lost patience and issued proceedings against Mrs X on 20th September 2019 which were served directly on her.
11. Parallel to the proceedings, correspondence continued between Advocate Begg and BCR and this was primarily concerned with the issue of an interim payment to Mrs X. Advocate Begg sought to persuade BCR and therefore the siblings not to table the action that they had served.
12. Advocate Begg failed to respond to a proposal sent about an interim payment and the siblings applied for judgment in default of an answer as one had not been filed and the time limit for doing so had expired. An answer was filed under threat of a judgment in default and a directions hearing took place in January 2020 and a further hearing in March 2020 was adjourned due to the onset and impact of Covid-19.
13. A settlement was ultimately reached in July 2020 and a hearing then took place before the Master on the issue of the costs of the proceedings.
14. The Master decided that up to 31st March 2018 the parties should recover their costs out of the estate. He then ordered that the balance of the siblings' costs (after March 2018) were to be paid out of Mrs X's share of the estate on the indemnity basis and she was to bear her own costs for the same period. The Master in his judgment was critical of the Respondent's part in the delay and referred the matter to the Law Society. He said this:
"Thereafter, I accept the plaintiffs' submission that the plaintiffs incurred costs in chasing Advocate Begg and in commencing proceedings, because Advocate Begg wholly failed to engage from April 2018, apart from one substantive response, until after proceedings were commenced over a year later. Even then there were further unnecessary delays which justified the plaintiffs both taking further steps in the proceedings and chasing Advocate Begg. The delays and the excuses repeatedly advanced of being on holiday and pressure of work are simply not acceptable. Neither is blaming an email address when that address ends begg-law.com. This clearly appears to be a work email not a personal email address. However, I do not propose to express any further criticism beyond this because I consider that the entirety of Advocate Begg's file in this matter should be reviewed by the Law Society, to consider whether his conduct of this matter complies with the requirements set out in the Law Society Code of Conduct. I am therefore referring Advocate Begg's conduct to the Law Society."
15. The costs were settled by agreement in the sum of £36,891.18 which was paid out initially from Mrs X's share of the estate. Subsequently under cover of a letter of 3rd June 2021, Advocate Begg reimbursed Mrs X for this amount by cheque and at the same time sent an invoice for his costs, reduced by 50% as a "gesture of good will" to reflect "that this matter has not progressed the way it should have". The bill reduced by 50%, was in the sum of £12,567.20. Mrs X counter offered to pay £6,000 and Advocate Begg agreed to reduce the fees to £6,327.88. At the time of the hearing before us the matter remained outstanding.
16. It is also fair to note that Advocate Begg sent a written apology to BCR on 23rd April 2021 noting amongst other things that:
"I recognise that I was the cause of that progress being held up for an unnecessarily long time", and "this is not the way in which I, or the majority of the Jersey legal profession, normally conduct our professional activities".
17. The Law Society having received the complaint from the Master reviewed Advocate Begg's file and copies of correspondence received by Mrs X. It became apparent that a without prejudice email sent by BCR on 27th March 2019, was eventually forwarded to Mrs X on 10th May 2019 and had been altered to remove the date of the email and remove the word "inordinate" from the sentence "given the inordinate delay which has occurred in simply agreeing to the appointment of an executor, my client has instructed me to move the matter on more generally."
18. It was also apparent that Advocate Begg had instructed his secretary to carry out both of these actions and that is clear from an email exchange between them.
19. BCR had also sent to Advocate Begg an open email on the same day, 27th March 2019, which included the following:
"We are now almost 7 weeks further on since your last correspondence, and 6 weeks since I wrote asking you to respond, substantively. Your continued delay in this matter is deeply unsatisfactory. It is, frankly, becoming increasingly difficult to dissuade my clients from reporting this matter to the Law Society ..."
20. The email then went on to ask for answers to specific questions.
21. Advocate Begg did not forward the email to his client or in any way bring the criticism of him contained within it to her attention.
22. The complaint is before us by virtue of Article 26 of the Law Society (Jersey) Law 2005 ("the 2005 Law") which also provides (in Article 32) that nothing in the Law should limit the inherent jurisdiction of the Court to exercise disciplinary control over practitioners.
23. The Law Society of Jersey's Code of Conduct (as issued from time to time) is engaged, so far as it is relevant to this matter, as follows:
"Principle 1 Members must, in compliance with their overriding duty to the court, uphold the rule of law and the proper administration of justice in the course of their professional duties and/or the provision of legal services.
Principle 2 Members must not, in their professional and personal lives, act in any way which brings or which may fairly bring the legal profession or the provision of legal services in Jersey into disrepute.
Principle 3 Members must, at all times, act with honesty and integrity
Principle 4 Members must act in the best interests of their clients.
Principle 6 Members must provide a proper standard of work and service to their clients.
Rule 1.5 Members must ensure that their clients are aware of relevant issues during the course of the retainer. Members shall attend to all client affairs with diligence and answer all correspondence within the timescales agreed with the client or, if no such timescales have been agreed, within a reasonable time. Members must treat their clients fairly and correctly at all times.
Rule 3.1 (c) Members owe a duty to the court to act with independence in the interests of justice. This duty overrides any inconsistent obligations which they may have (other than obligations under the criminal law and confidentiality). It includes the following specific obligations which apply whether they are acting as an advocate or are otherwise involved in the conduct of litigation in whatever rôle (with the exception of R.3.1 a), which applies when acting as an advocate before any court or tribunal).
Members must:
c) take reasonable steps to avoid wasting the court's time;
Rule 4.1 Members must not do anything which could reasonably be seen by the public to undermine their honesty, integrity and independence.
Rule 5.1 A member's duty to act in the best interests of each client (Principle 4), to provide a proper standard of service to each client (Principle 6) and to keep the affairs of each client confidential (Rule 2.1) includes the following obligations:
Members must:
a) promote fearlessly, and by all proper and lawful means, the client's best interests;
b) do so without regard to their own interests or to any consequences to them".
24. The issues before the Court were as follows:
"(i) Whether delays between April 2018 and April 2019, and May 2019 and September 2019 which were the responsibility of Advocate Begg amounted to misconduct;
(ii) Whether Advocate Begg's failure to forward to his client an open email sent by BCR on 27 March 2019 ("the open email") was misconduct and, if so, whether it amounted to a lack of integrity or to dishonesty on the part of Advocate Begg;
(iii) Whether Advocate Begg's alteration of a without prejudice save as to costs email sent by BCR on 27 March 2019 ("the without prejudice email") before forwarding it to his client was misconduct and, if so, whether that misconduct was a want of integrity or was dishonest. The email in question was altered by the removal of its date (which would have revealed that it had been received several weeks before by Advocate Begg) and the word "inordinate" from the phase "inordinate delay"."
25. It was accepted by Advocate Begg that the delays referred to in paragraph 24(i) amounted to misconduct and it was further accepted by him that the alteration in the words of the without prejudice email of 27th March 2019 was also misconduct. He accepted that that misconduct amounted to a lack of integrity, but he did not accept that it was dishonest. He did not accept that the failure to forward the open email of 27th March 2019 was misconduct in any way.
26. There are a number of English authorities concerning dishonesty and the discipline of lawyers. In the case of Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd (trading as Crockfords Club) [2018] AC 391, the Supreme Court set out the test for dishonesty at paragraph 74:
"These several considerations provide convincing grounds for holding that the second leg of the test propounded in R v Ghosh [1982] QB 1053 does not correctly represent the law and that directions based upon it ought no longer to be given. The test of dishonesty is as set out by Lord Nicholls in Royal Brunei Airlines Sdn Bhd v Tan [1995] 2 AC 378 and by Lord Hoffmann in Barlow Clowes International Ltd v Eurotrust International Ltd [2006] 1 WLR 1476, para 10: see para 62 above. When dishonesty is in question the fact-finding tribunal must first ascertain (subjectively) the actual state of the individual's knowledge or belief as to the facts. The reasonableness or otherwise of his belief is a matter of evidence (often in practice determinative) going to whether he held the belief, but it is not an additional requirement that his belief must be reasonable; the question is whether it is genuinely held. When once his actual state of mind as to knowledge or belief as to facts is established, the question whether his conduct was honest or dishonest is to be determined by the fact-finder by applying the (objective) standards of ordinary decent people. There is no requirement that the defendant must appreciate that what he has done is, by those standards, dishonest".
27. In the Attorney General v Sinel and Chiddicks [2015] JRC049B, Commissioner Beloff confirmed the following in relation to misleading by omission, which is instructive to this case in so far as Advocate Begg failed to forward the 'open' email to his client:
".....In this context it is well established that an advocate may mislead by omission as well as by commission. In R v Rumpf [1987] Supreme Court Victoria, McGarvie J stated:-[P472]
"Counsel and solicitors for the defence must not knowingly mislead the court either by the words used or by omitting to say what is necessary to be said in order to prevent literally true words which have been used from misleading. In another context Lord Chelmsford observed: It is said that the prospectus is true as far as it goes, but half a truth will sometimes amount to a real falsehood."
28. Principle 3 of the Law Society of Jersey's Code of Conduct states that, "Members must, at all times, act with honesty and integrity" (emphasis added). In the case of Wingate v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2018] 1 WLR 3969, the English Court of Appeal considered two cases brought against solicitors in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal which were subsequently appealed. The Court found that there was the following distinction to be drawn between honesty and integrity:
"The general law imposes criminal and/or civil liability for many, but not all, dishonest acts or omissions. As explained most recently in the Ivey case [2017] 3 WLR 1212, the test for dishonesty is objective. Nevertheless, the defendant's state of mind as well as their conduct are relevant to determining whether they have acted dishonestly.
Let me now turn to integrity. As a matter of common parlance and as a matter of law, integrity is a broader concept than honesty. In this regard, I agree with the observations of the Divisional Court in the Williams case [2017] EWHC 1478 (Admin) and I disagree with the observations of Mostyn J in the Malins case [2017] 4 WLR 85.
Integrity is a more nebulous concept than honesty. Hence it is less easy to define, as a number of judges have noted.
In professional codes of conduct, the term "integrity" is a useful shorthand to express the higher standards which society expects from professional persons and which the professions expect from their own members. See the judgment of Sir Brian Leveson P in the Williams case at para 130. The underlying rationale is that the professions have a privileged and trusted role in society. In return they are required to live up to their own professional standards.
I agree with Davis LJ in the Chan case [2015] EWHC 2659 (Admin) that it is not possible to formulate an all-purpose, comprehensive definition of integrity. On the other hand, it is a counsel of despair to say: "Well you can always recognise it, but you can never describe it."
The broad contours of what integrity means, at least in the context of professional conduct, are now becoming clearer. The observations of the Financial Services and Markets Tribunal in the Hoodless case [2003] UKFTT 7 have met with general approbation.
Integrity connotes adherence to the ethical standards of one's own profession. That involves more than mere honesty. To take one example, a solicitor conducting negotiations or a barrister making submissions to a judge or arbitrator will take particular care not to mislead. Such a professional person is expected to be even more scrupulous about accuracy than a member of the general public in daily discourse.
The duty to act with integrity applies not only to what professional persons say, but also to what they do. It is possible to give many illustrations of what constitutes acting without integrity. For example, in the case of solicitors:
(i) A sole practice giving the appearance of being a partnership and deliberately flouting the conduct rules: the Emeana case [2014] ACD 14.
(ii) Recklessly, but not dishonestly, allowing a court to be misled: the Brett case [2015] PNLR 2.
(iii) Subordinating the interests of the clients to the solicitors' own financial interests: the Chan case [2015] EWHC 2659 (Admin).
(iv) Making improper payments out of the client account: the Scott case [2016] EWHC 1256 (Admin).
(v) Allowing the firm to become involved in conveyancing transactions which bear the hallmarks of mortgage fraud (the Newell-Austin case [2017] Med LR 194.
(vi) Making false representations on behalf of the client: the Williams case [2017] EWHC 1478 (Admin).
Obviously, neither courts nor professional tribunals must set unrealistically high standards, as was observed during argument. The duty of integrity does not require professional people to be paragons of virtue. In every instance, professional integrity is linked to the manner in which that particular profession professes to serve the public. Having accepted that principle, it is not necessary for this court to reach a view on whether the Howd case [2017] 4 WLR 54 was correctly decided.
A jury in a criminal trial is drawn from the wider community and is well able to identify what constitutes dishonesty. A professional disciplinary tribunal has specialist knowledge of the profession to which the respondent belongs and of the ethical standards of that profession. Accordingly such a body is well placed to identify want of integrity. The decisions of such a body must be respected, unless it has erred in law".
29. In the light of the cases, the Attorney General submits that the following applies in relation to integrity:
(i) Integrity is a broader and more nebulous concept than dishonesty;
(ii) Integrity denotes adherence to the ethical standards of one's own profession;
(iii) Integrity applies to what a practitioner does as well as to what they say; and
(iv) Unrealistically high standards of integrity ought not to be applied.
30. We first heard from Mrs X who impressed us as a straightforward witness. It is clear that she was untutored in the ways of the Law and lawyers and indeed Advocate Begg was the first lawyer she had ever had the need to engage. It is fair to say also that she relied on him entirely and said quite frankly on the matter of the removal of the word "inordinate" that she would not have understood what it meant.
31. There is no doubt at all from both her affidavit and her evidence that she feels bitterly let down by Advocate Begg and found the process of being sued highly stressful and that stress, on her evidence, has had a continuing effect on her wellbeing. She is a retired lady of limited means and to become embroiled in an unnecessary dispute was a real challenge for her. She would describe herself as a simple person with no knowledge at all of these types of matters.
32. Advocate Begg gave evidence and was cross examined by the Attorney General. In essence he maintained that the emails of 27th March 2019 had been sent to his personal email address which was not checked regularly. Had they been sent to his business email address then they would have automatically been forwarded to his secretary, filed and printed out for his attention. That did not happen which accounts for an element of the delay.
33. It is difficult to understand that an email address of the type stated above should be anything other than the business address but we accept Advocate Begg's evidence on this point. We were shown screen shots of his phone where he reviews such emails and the first line may be visible but not the rest. He assumed, he told us, that the email had been forwarded to his secretary for printing and he was not able to tell whether it was an email to his "personal address" or his professional address.
34. He sought to explain some of the delay and his actions by reference to other things that were going on in his professional and personal life. He had undertaken a great deal of work and he was under pressure and there had been an office move which had demanded a great deal of his attention. When the emails came to his attention, he had been on holiday with his siblings who he had not seen for a significant period and he felt that the judgments that he made and the directions he gave to his secretary to alter the without prejudice email were taken with his "holiday head on". He expressed the view that he would not have made those decisions, which he now knew to be wrong, if he had been in the office and dealing with it in the ordinary course of business.
35. We must say immediately that we find those explanations difficult to accept. We are sure that Advocate Begg had other professional and indeed personal pressures at the same time and we accept the decisions that he made were made whilst he was on holiday. The simple fact is, however, if a practitioner takes it upon themselves to make a decision, they have a responsibility for making that decision as well and as clearly as they are able no matter where they make it. Advocate Begg was only away for a relatively short period and could easily have deferred making any such decision until his return. He had a responsibility, as a sole practitioner, to ensure that his clients were not prejudiced and therefore we reject the explanation that we should take into account the fact that he was on his holiday in determining those matters that we have to determine.
36. His explanation for the removal of the word "inordinate" and the date of the without prejudice email we find particularly difficult to grasp. In his affidavit he gives the following reason:
"Due to the passage of time, I am not fully aware of why I did this. I surmise that due to the confusion arising from the use of my personal email address (fully detailed in my Answer) I did not agree with the delays had been "inordinate" as described by Advocate Heywood. I accepted there had been delay, which I had no intention of hiding from Mrs X, which is why I only removed the adjective "inordinate" and left the word "delay" in the version I provided to Mrs X. It is significant that when I made this decision I was away on holiday, not working in the normal way... Whilst I regret my action, I am not sure that withholding the precise timing of events and Advocate Heywood's views of my conduct meant that Mrs X suffered any prejudice or was disadvantaged in any way."
37. However, in his evidence he explained that he had made the decision to direct his secretary to alter the email because he wanted to protect Mrs X. Had she seen the dates and the word "inordinate" she would have been concerned and he thought that it was much more important for her to focus on the issues that needed to be resolved in her affairs rather than the date on which the email had originally sent or that Advocate Begg was being accused of inordinate delay.
38. With regard to his failure to forward the open email which, in its first paragraph, is highly critical of him and makes threats of reporting him to the Law Society, he gave a similar explanation. He did not want to trouble his client with these concerns and wished instead for her to focus on that which was important.
39. We should say at once that we find both of these explanations incredible and we reject them. As far as we can see the only reasonable explanation for the alteration of the "without prejudice" email and the failure to send the open email was because they contained things which were expressly or impliedly critical of Advocate Begg himself and which were true. He was taking those steps not for the benefit of his client but to protect himself from embarrassment or from criticism or indeed other action from his client. He had every motivation to keep his client "on side" but the fact is that he had seriously prejudiced her position by his delay and failure to deal with her matter in a proper and reasonably expeditious way. He did not act in her best interests and deliberately did not send the open email of 27th March 2019 to her and the motivation for the deliberate alteration of the without prejudice email was to avoid embarrassment and difficulties with his client. In our judgment both the failure to forward the open email and the alteration to the without prejudice email not only demonstrated a want of integrity but were dishonest.
40. In argument before the Court, Advocate Begg's legal adviser had sought to argue that the failure to send on the open email was not a matter that amounted to a want of integrity. In cross examination, however, Advocate Begg conceded that it did amount to a lack of integrity although he maintained his view which we have rejected that it was not dishonest.
41. We also heard from Mrs Denise Heslam who is Advocate Begg's secretary. She had explained in her affidavit the processes within his office. She had made the alterations requested by Advocate Begg and did not appear to have any real explanation as to why that happened. She hypothesised that it was done to assist Mrs X. It had never been done with any emails in the past but she had largely forgotten the circumstances of it.
42. Although we do not reject her evidence we do find it difficult to credit that she would have forgotten entirely something which was on her own evidence such a singular event as to alter a communication from another lawyer before forwarding it to a client.
43. Accordingly, in our decision of 10th June 2022 we made the following findings:
(a) the delays set out in paragraph 3(i) above which were attributable to Advocate Begg were excessive, amounted to misconduct, and that misconduct was moderately serious;
(b) With regard to the failure to forward the open email of 27th March 2019, we note that the email began with a preliminary paragraph which pointed to BCR's clients' exasperation at the delays in answering their queries and contained a phrase suggesting that BCR's clients were close to reporting Advocate Begg to the Law Society for the delays. In our judgment Advocate Begg's failure to pass this email on was clearly because it contained criticism of him and was to avoid embarrassment with or criticism from his client. It was a deliberate withholding of information which, had it been provided, might have caused his client to take different actions. It was not in her best interests; it was deliberate, and in the context, dishonest;
(c) With regard to the removal of the words "inordinate" and the date from the without prejudice email on the same day, in our judgment those details were removed because they implied criticism of Advocate Begg or would have given rise to concerns by his client as to the delay in passing the email on, and were accordingly done to avoid embarrassment and difficulties with his client, were not in her best interests, were knowing and deliberate and were in the circumstances dishonest.
44. In the light of those findings, on 4th July 2022 we proceeded to consider penalty.
45. The principles that the Court is to consider when sanctioning a legal practitioner for misconduct are set out in the case of Bolton v Law Society [1994] 1 WLR 512 at 518. These principles have been oft cited by the Royal Court and re-affirmed as applicable to legal practitioners in this jurisdiction, mostly recently in AG v Harrigan [2022] JRC064:
"Any solicitor who is shown to have discharged his professional duties with anything less than complete integrity, probity and trustworthiness must expect severe sanctions to be imposed upon him by the Solicitor's Disciplinary Tribunal. Lapses from the required high standard may, of course, take different forms and be of varying degrees. The most serious involves proven dishonesty, whether or not leading to criminal proceedings and criminal penalties. In such cases the Tribunal has almost invariably, no matter how strong the mitigation advanced for the solicitor, ordered that he be struck off the Roll of Solicitors.
...
It is important that there should be full understanding of the reasons why the tribunal makes orders which might otherwise seem harsh. There is, in some of these orders, a punitive element: a penalty may be visited on a solicitor who has fallen below the standards required of his profession in order to punish him for what he has done and to deter any other solicitor tempted to behave in the same way. Those are traditional objects of punishment. But often the order is not punitive in intention. ... In most cases the order of the tribunal will be primarily directed to one or other or both of two other purposes. One is to be sure that the offender does not have the opportunity to repeat the offence. This purpose is achieved for a limited period by an order of suspension; plainly it is hoped that experience of suspension will make the offender meticulous in his future compliance with the required standards. The purpose is achieved for a longer period, and quite possibly indefinitely, by an order of striking off. The second purpose is the most fundamental of all: to maintain the reputation of the solicitors' profession as one in which every member, of whatever standing, may be trusted to the ends of the earth. To maintain this reputation and sustain public confidence in the integrity of the profession it is often necessary that those guilty of serious lapses are not only expelled but denied re-admission.....
Because orders made by the tribunal are not primarily punitive, it follows that considerations which would ordinarily weigh in mitigation of punishment have less effect on the exercise of this jurisdiction than on the ordinary run of sentences imposed in criminal cases. It often happens that a solicitor appearing before the tribunal can adduce a wealth of glowing tributes from his professional brethren. He can often show that for him and his family the consequences of striking off or suspension would be little short of tragic. Often he will say, convincingly, that he has learned his lesson and will not offend again. All these matters are relevant and should be considered. But none of them touches the essential issue, which is the need to maintain among members of the public a well-founded confidence that any solicitor whom they instruct will be a person of unquestionable integrity, probity and trustworthiness. ... The reputation of the profession is more important than the fortunes of any individual member. Membership of a profession brings many benefits, but that is a part of the price."
46. In Law Society (Solicitors Regulation Authority) v Emeana [2014] A.C.D. 14, The appellant authority appealed against sentences imposed by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in respect of three respondent solicitors who received fines rather than having been struck off. The High Court held that breaches less serious than dishonesty could still result in a practitioner being struck off:
"The essential principle is that which was identified by Sir Thomas Bingham MR in Bolton v Law Society [1994] 1 WLR 1286 The profession of solicitor requires complete integrity, probity and trustworthiness. Lapses less serious than dishonesty may nonetheless require striking off, if the reputation of the solicitors' profession "to be trusted to the ends of the earth" is to be maintained.
The principle identified in Bolton means that in cases where there has been a lapse of standards of integrity, probity and trustworthiness a solicitor should expect to be struck off. Such cases will vary in severity. It is commonplace, in mitigation, either at first instance or on appeal, whether the forum is a criminal court or a disciplinary body, for the defendant to contend that his case is not as serious as others. That may well be true. But the submission is of little assistance. If a solicitor has shown lack of integrity, probity or trustworthiness, he cannot resist striking off by pointing out that there are others who have been struck off, who were guilty of far more serious offences. The very fact that an absence of integrity, probity or trustworthiness may well result in striking off, even though dishonesty is not proved, explains why the range of those who should be struck off will be wide. Their offences will vary in gravity. Striking off is the most serious sanction but it is not reserved for offences of dishonesty".
47. We note the principles in these judgments which we approve.
48. Advocate Begg has previous findings of misconduct by the Superior Number on two occasions: AG v Begg [2012] JRC 209 and AG v Begg [2014] JRC 254.
49. The Attorney General moves that Advocate Begg should be removed from the roll of advocates of this Court. Advocate Begg does not resist these conclusions and we think rightly so. Other than in exceptional circumstances a finding of dishonesty will be met with striking off. We note that Advocate Begg has already taken steps to enable the transfer of his practice to other firms.
In all the circumstances we order that Advocate Begg's name be removed from the roll of Advocates of the Court with immediate effect and make the necessary ancillary orders as suggested on behalf of the Attorney General and agreed by the Bâtonnier.
Authorities
Law Society of Jersey Law 2005.
Wills and Succession (Jersey) Law 1993.
Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd (trading as Crockfords Club) [2018] AC 391.
AG v Sinel and Chiddicks [2015] JRC 049B.
Wingate v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2018] 1 WLR 3969.
Bolton v Law Society [1994] 1 WLR 512 at 518.
AG v Harrigan [2022] JRC064.
Law Society (Solicitors Regulation Authority) v Emeana [2014] A.C.D. 14.