John Gould puts disciplinary procedures & the standard of proof required by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal under the spotlight
- Deciding the standard of proof required in allegations against solicitors means striking a balance between the interests of the individual and public protection.
It takes a long time and a lot of money and effort to become a solicitor, but does that mean that disciplinary sanctions should only be applied as if they were criminal convictions? Can it be right that the public’s trust of solicitors should be qualified by the knowledge that some solicitors still in practice have been adjudged as probably dishonest? In this article I look at the question of the standard of proof in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) and then, following on from my previous article (‘Regulatory matters’, NLJ 16 March 2018, p10), consider the distorting effect of allegations focused on a binary decision on dishonesty rather than a graduated approach to integrity.
Applying the criminal standard
In its recently published annual report the
