Solicitor who practised while suspended avoids permanent ban

An experienced solicitor who was practising before his suspension ended has avoided being permanently struck off the roll. Michael Baker, 70, a former partner at now-closed Kent Baker McDonald, was suspended for a year from April 2015 for breaches of accounting rules and acting dishonestly. He was due to apply for permission from the Solicitors Regulation Authority to work as a solicitor once his suspension was lifted.

However, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that Baker practised as a solicitor from February to April 2016 at his old firm, where he remained until January 2017.

The SRA initially presented the tribunal with an agreed order from Baker, proposing to suspend him for three years.

However, the tribunal did not consider that this outcome adequately reflected the seriousness of the offence admitted and recommended a five-year suspended sentence, which the tribunal accepted “albeit with some reservations”.

“There was a need to protect both the public and the reputation of the legal profession from future harm by disqualifying the respondent from practising,” the ruling states. “However, the tribunal was satisfied that, in the particular circumstances of this case, neither the protection of the public nor the protection of the reputation of the legal profession justified the imposition of the ultimate sanction of striking out. That said, the tribunal will not withdraw from such proceedings in any future case in which the tribunal’s order is ignored.”

Baker, admitted in 1992, was invited by a partner at the firm in February 2016 to help a client sell a house, business and land. The client was told he would be a “dedicated day-to-day liaison” and Baker later admitted to SRA investigators that he had been working as a clerk to help the firm.

However, correspondence relating to the client file showed that Baker had undertaken more than just clerical work, including arranging for the registry to be restricted and drafting the loan agreement.

In an unagreed mitigation, Baker said he had not been paid for his work and wrongly assumed he had not acted in breach of his suspension. He did not call himself a lawyer throughout the case, although he became heavily involved because of its complexity. Baker added that he valued his role and apologised for what had been a “stain on my career as a lawyer and on the profession in general”.

In addition to the five-year ban, he will also have to pay £4,000 costs.