The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal will hold case management hearings today in two cases arising from the Post Office scandal. One involves a former general counsel at the Post Office accused of failing to cooperate with the recent public inquiry. The other involves a solicitor who represented former postmasters wrongly accused of dishonesty.
These hearings are being held remotely and will be livestreamed to the public on Zoom. A third case management hearing today involves clients who faced unexpected costs orders after claiming compensation for faulty cavity wall insulation.
What do these hearings involve? Will Jane MacLeod, the former Post Office lawyer, be represented at the hearing? Does her failure to attend the public inquiry amount to disciplinary matter at all? And — given that the tribunal has no say in which cases are referred to it by the Solicitors Regulation Authority — how will the tribunal handle as many as 20 cases that may brought against lawyers accused of prosecuting innocent postmasters?
Those are among the questions I put to Alison Kellett yesterday in the first broadcast interview given by the tribunal’s president since it was created by parliament just over 50 years ago. Kellett (pictured) talks sympathetically on this week’s episode of A Lawyer Talks about the mistakes made by all solicitors — even her — and what happens when solicitors are told that their careers have just come to an end.
My weekly podcast interview, as always, is a bonus for paying subscribers to A Lawyer Writes. Everyone else can listen to a short taster by clicking the ► symbol on the graphic at the top of this page.
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Joshua Rozenberg. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Joshua Rozenberg och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
