Judges struck off

A district judge and a former deputy costs judge have been struck off the roll of solicitors for misusing £1.5m of legal aid cash.

Denis Francis McKay and Stuart Roger Turner were banned from practice at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) this week. The tribunal ruled that they acted without integrity and abused the trust that was placed in them, acted with reckless disregard for their professional obligations and breached the Solicitors Accounts Rules.

Both solicitors were partners at Lonsdales Solicitors, based in Blackpool and Preston, at the time of the offences. McKay was a former deputy costs judge and Turner a district judge.

The tribunal heard that they deliberately, systematically and extensively failed to account to the Legal Services Commission (LSC, now the Legal Aid Authority) for at least £1.5m of public funds that had been recovered in successful litigation.

Lonsdales would receive payments from the LSC for work done for its clients. When costs for this work were recovered from the other side, Lonsdales should have returned these costs to the LSC, but failed to do so in a large number of cases. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) closed the firm in July 2011 when it discovered what was going on.

In their defence, McKay agreed that the firm owed a considerable sum of money to the LSC but said he had hoped that they could eventually repay the debt. He accepted that with hindsight he should have taken a different course of action. Turner denied having knowledge that the firm were failing to report payment of costs received from third parties.

Gordon Ramsay, SRA director of enforcement, says: “Solicitors hold positions of great trust, so it is essential that they act with integrity. 

“The public needs to know that if solicitors fail to uphold these standards they will be held to account. Legal aid is there to support access to justice—not to fund solicitors’ practices.”