UK: Ex-Taylor Rose partner suspended for telling NQ to lie to client

Roll On Friday

A former Taylor Rose partner has been suspended after telling a newly qualified lawyer to send an email with a lie to a client.

Rajpal Panesar was a managing partner in Taylor Rose’s property department and the supervisor of a newly qualified solicitor, ‘Person A’, who had only been qualified for around three weeks when the incident occurred.

On Friday 19 March 2021, Panesar asked the NQ to photocopy and post a conveyancing report for a client. However, the junior lawyer didn’t send the report that day. On Monday 22 March, Panesar mistakenly confirmed to the estate agent that the report had been sent to the client, unaware that was not the case.

The next day, Panesar contacted Person A and found out the report hadn’t gone. The NQ suggested that it could be sent by courier that day, but the partner disagreed, saying the client would then realise the documents had only just been sent.

The NQ drafted a covering email to the client, saying that the report had not been sent earlier because they were short-staffed, due to Covid. However, Panesar amended it, with a fib that the report had been posted, but returned to the firm, and so they were sending it again.

Person A said she was not comfortable sending something under her name which was a lie, and that in a subsequent telephone call, the partner persistently asked her to send the misleading email. But Panesar claimed the conversation went differently, and the pair agreed by the end of the call that that email shouldn’t be sent.

The NQ sent her original email to the client about the delay, and then contacted the firm’s compliance officer and the SRA to report Panesar’s misconduct.

At the hearing, the tribunal noted the fact that the report was sent on 23 March rather than on 19 March 2021, and had no impact on the client nor the transaction (which completed).

https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/ex-taylor-rose-partner-suspended-telling-nq-lie-client