The case concerned the conduct of Ms Riffat Hussain (“the Respondent”), who had been employed as an immigration solicitor at the University of Liverpool Law Clinic (“the Clinic”). The Solicitors Regulation Authority (“the Applicant” or “the SRA”) advanced two allegations against her. The first was that the Respondent sought to mislead her employer by deleting from the Clinic’s case management system (“CMS”) (i) a self task she had created on 26 June 2023 entitled “Ensure decision letter sent”, and (ii) a blank draft letter addressed to the client, thereby concealing when she had received the Home Office decision of 15 June 2023 and the actions she had taken in response to it.

The Clinic’s electronic case management system (“the CMS”) recorded activity such as the uploading, viewing, creation, and deletion of documents. The CMS data showed that the Home Office decision was uploaded by an administrator on 19 June 2023 and that a draft letter and reminder task to ensure the decision was sent to the client were created by the Respondent on 26 June 2023. The records further indicated no substantive activity on the file until mid September, when a file note was added, and the draft and reminder task were deleted on 18 September 2023, by the Respondent. On 19 September 2023, the Respondent spoke to her colleague, Ms Carter, about the case.

The Applicant’s first allegation was that these recorded events demonstrated that, on 18 September 2023, the Respondent had sought to mislead the Clinic by deleting the reminder task and draft letter, which the Applicant said was done to conceal when she had received the Home Office decision and what action she had taken or failed to take in response. The Applicant relied in particular on the timing of the deletions, the irreversible nature of such deletions within the CMS, and the file note entered by the Respondent shortly beforehand, which the Applicant contended gave the false impression that the decision had only recently come to her attention.

The second allegation concerned the Respondent’s conversation with her colleague, Ms Judith Carter, on 19 September 2023. The Applicant alleged that the Respondent had attempted to mislead Ms Carter by stating that she had not known about the June decision until very recently, when the CMS records showed that she had had it in June 2023. The Applicant relied on both Ms Carter’s witness statement and the note she added to the file on the following day recording what she said the Respondent had told her.

The Respondent denied both allegations. She said when reviewing the case on 18 September 2023 she had not appreciated or retained any earlier awareness of it. She accepted that the audit trail showed the deletion of the self task but said she did not recall deleting it and did not accept any intention to mislead by doing so. She said the deletion of the blank draft letter was a routine administrative action. She also disputed the accuracy of the account given by Ms Carter, saying she did not recall stating that she had been unaware of the decision and that any misunderstanding had arisen from her own confusion rather than from any intention to mislead.

After considering the written and oral evidence during a three day hearing, the Tribunal did not find either allegation proved. In relation to Allegation 1.1, although the Tribunal found that the Respondent deleted the June self-task and the draft letter it was not satisfied that she did so with the intention of misleading her employer. The contemporaneous records, her immediate efforts to contact the client, and the retention of other June entries on the CMS were inconsistent with a deliberate attempt at concealment. In relation to Allegation 1.2, the Tribunal was not satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the Respondent made the statement attributed to her by Ms Carter, nor that she sought to mislead her; the Tribunal noted in reaching this conclusion the limitations of Ms Carter’s recollection and the timing of her note in relation to conversations she had with others at the time. Ultimately there was an absence of clear and cogent evidence that the Respondent intended to mislead Ms Carter. Accordingly, both allegations were dismissed.