A solicitor who lost a briefcase of sensitive documents relating to an ongoing Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) case and then lied about having them at her house has lost her license to practice law.

According to a judgement decision published in March 2020 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, Claire Matthews, a solicitor in the clinical law team at Capsticks, covered up the fact that she had left the briefcase on a train in May 2018.

The tribunal found that she subsequently told her colleague that she still had the briefcase, which belonged to the co-worker, at her flat and then a week later told her supervisor that she had left it on the train just that morning. 

The SDT ruled in March that Matthews should lose her license to practice law and pay costs of £10,000, reduced from £18,00 owing to her current means.

The lost documents related to a claim being made against the SRA by an individual, Person X, who claimed that the SRA had failed to deal with their subject access request under the Data Protection Act. They included court orders, witness statements as well as sensitive personal information on Person X.

The SRA later had to explain the loss of sensitive material to Person X and compensate them for their loss.

In her mitigation, Matthews, who denied allegations of misconduct and dishonesty, claimed that she "sincerely regretted" the incident and that she had acted in "panic." 

Capsticks dismissed her in June 2018, less than a month after the incident took place. Matthews had only been at Capsticks for less than a month when the incident occured.

Ruling that Matthews had acted dishonestly, the tribunal stated that while the loss of the briefcase on the train had been unfortunate, "it was the poor choices the respondent had made thereafter which directly gave rise to the misconduct found by the Tribunal to have occurred."