This matter concerned the Respondent, a professionally junior solicitor admitted to the Roll in March 2020, who admitted allegations of dishonesty, a lack of integrity and failure to uphold public confidence in the profession in connection with an application submitted to Erksine Chambers, during the 2022 round of pupillage applications. At the time, the Respondent was employed as an associate at Slaughter & May.

The first allegation was that the Respondent had provided false and misleading information in his application stating that he had attained a double starred first-class degree and had been awarded the ‘Slaughter and May Prize’ for best overall performance during his final undergraduate year. 4. It was further alleged that, following the completion of a second interview with the chambers, the Respondent provided inaccurate and misleading information to one of his referees, informing him that he had not made the application and suspected he had been the victim of a practical joke.

The Applicant alleged breaches of Principles 2, 4 and 5 of the SRA Principles 2019 and Paragraph 1.4 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs 2019 in respect of each allegation.

The Respondent admitted all of the allegations and associated breaches from the outset, but submitted that the case fell within the residual category of cases where exceptional circumstances apply, as defined in SRA v Imran [2020] EWHC 3151 (Admin).
After listening with care to the submissions of the parties, the Tribunal determined that despite accepting that the Respondent was suffering from a depressive illness at the relevant time of the misconduct, the nature and extent of the dishonesty admitted was such that