UK solicitor misconduct question
Location: England
If anyone is familiar with how the SRA works, maybe you can weigh in on this issue.
A UK non-practising (registered) solicitor wrote to me on behalf of his associate (a lady) djring a orivate diapute. He made it out to be a legal issue in his communication.
The main thing I'm curious about is the specific mechanism of threatening to submit a safeguarding report to someone's workplace alleging safeguarding abuses unless a series of demands are satisfied. None of the demands had anything to do with a safeguarding issue. It was written in unambiguous plain English (offering to withhold the threatened report unless XYZ is met).
He relied on giving the impression of his legal authority without stating directly that he's nom-practising. He signed off as LLB (Sol). He wrote a legal-style letter with all the language and the structure of allegations, remedies, etc...except that it was a major unwarranted threat dressed up. He alleged many things about me for which there was no evidence - and often contrary evidence. There's written evidence to show the man acted in retaliation to something unrelated, and that it was all in the name of scaring, punishing and improperly forcing the deletion of information. His demands included payment for things which were not owed, the return of gifts which were unconditional, the deletion of all communications (evidence), various other undertakings, and the threat of about five diffeeent lawsuits and high court injunctions. He knew I was undefended and there was a massive power imbalance. He was also aware that the allegations had zero foundation and relevance and misrepresented them to make the safeguarding letter sound scary. Police were given his letter and initially gave the conduct a malicious communications crime reference. Later, the person he represented got in touch to retract everything and say they acted in bad faith because she was offended and that she didn't believe I was a risk at any point. The solicitor also potentially misrepresented that King's Counsel (at a named chambers) was the authorising premise for his approach and had advised it (the purported KCadvice does not line up with evidenced relevant facts). The lady later confirmed that KC had not been instructed. Instead, I found an informal and professional link online between the man and a certain extremely high profile KC. It was basically thecnom-practising solicitor's buddy. She also claimed the non-practising solicitor unilaterally wrote the threat letter without her oversight or consent. I called his bluff, and he went silent, and no threats were carried out. I spent a long time documenting the entire thing as a case file for the SRA, and it was exhausting. I have a hundred pages of first-hand written evidence over many hundreds of emails and screenshots discrediting every single thing he said and the angle he took. I guess I'm just curious what people think the outcome of all this could be once reported. It - and the issues that led up to it - took such a toll on me I abandoned it for some time to deal with my wellbeing.
This conduct - despite the solicitor being non-practising - how might the SRA view it...?
Posted Sep 12, 2026, 2:27 AM UTC