White, R (on the application of) v Office For Supervision Of Solicitors

Professional regulators are entitled to exercise informed judgment about standards of client care, subject to judicial supervision. A court reviewing disciplinary decisions asks whether the substance of the decision emerges clearly and whether the reasoning is sufficient in the circumstances; the decision is not construed as if it were a statute. Solicitors may properly be sanctioned for failing to warn clients that an estimate is likely to be exceeded, unreasonable delay in responding to a complaint, and confrontational or inflammatory language. The regulator may assess professional standards and the appropriateness of sanctions, including conduct during an appeal. Permission to appeal should be refused where no arguable error is shown and proportionality does not justify further proceedings.

The applicant solicitor sought permission to appeal against Lightman J’s refusal of judicial review of decisions by the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors. Complaints by former clients concerned inadequate information about costs, delay in responding to their complaint, and the tone of the response. The adjudicator and appeal sub-committee ordered a refund and compensation, and increased the compensation on appeal.

The central issues were whether the decisions were inadequately reasoned or substantively unfair, whether the findings fell within the regulator’s statutory powers, and whether the appeal committee had jurisdiction to increase compensation by reference to the solicitor’s conduct during the appeal.

1. Application dismissed. Pill LJ held that there was no arguable ground on which the decisions could be quashed. Judge LJ agreed.
2. Under Schedule 1A to the Solicitors' Act 1974, the regulatory body may act where professional services have not reached the quality reasonably expected of a solicitor, provided that action is appropriate in all the circumstances. The power is not confined to cases involving a negligence cause of action.
3. The regulator was entitled to find that the solicitor should have warned the clients that costs were likely to exceed the estimate. Other information supplied to the clients did not necessarily discharge the specific guidance requiring notification of an increase. Cases where such information makes notification unnecessary would be rare.
4. The regulator was also entitled to regard a 25-working-day delay in answering the complaint as requiring sanction, and to regard the use of inflammatory language such as “scurrilous” as inappropriate. Solicitors are expected to exercise restraint and to seek to defuse complaints, even where the complaint is wide-ranging or provocative.
5. Decision letters in public law proceedings need not be read as statutes. The question is whether the substance of the decision and the reasoning leading to it emerge sufficiently clearly from the documents. The regulator’s expertise in judging professional standards attracts respect, subject to the court’s supervisory jurisdiction.
6. The court was inclined to accept that the regulator could take account of the manner in which a complaint was dealt with during appeal proceedings. Permission was nevertheless refused because the point had not been taken below, the amount involved was small, the facts were unfavourable to the applicant, and proportionality did not justify further litigation. There was no order for costs.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): Permission to appeal against the judgment of Lightman J was refused; the application was dismissed.
• Administrative Court, Queen’s Bench Division: Lightman J refused judicial review of the adjudicator’s and appeal sub-committee’s decisions.
• Office for the Supervision of Solicitors: The adjudicator’s decision was upheld on appeal, with compensation increased to £150.