Is this appropriate conduct for solicitors?

[AugustaFinkNottle]

A solicitors' firm which acts for councils in special educational needs tribunals has tweeted the following:

"Great ABA Trib win this week ... interesting to see how parents continue to persist with it. Funny thing is parents think they won ;)"

I can't link to it due to having been blocked but it's been retweeted, e.g here.

The original tweet resulted in numerous complaints and a quick change to the tweet.

The case they're triumphalising about will have involved a disabled child. Lovely.

The contracts may not allow termination where a tweet is badly worded or you send pictures of cats.

Have we established if he was allowed to say he'd won a case? For example all my cases are in public courts and the judgments although usually not published by the court are public and journalists and anyone can get copies and those facts in the public domain can be reported. I am not sure if that is the same for these SEN hearings from the comments above as they are held in secret but can you say - I won a case? Secondly if you can can you say I won a case against ABC parents ?(I am not sure he did identify them)

The man needs to stop digging now! A threat to his family is unacceptable but tweeting offensive things is hardly the right response. If he's this incoherent and arrogant in cases no wonder families struggle.

Solicitors are very costly. We've just spent £5k which has taken us to the point where the LA are going to produce the EHC plan. You expect their bills to be high but you would also expect a firm to be nothing other than straight and professional. I really think that LAs have a responsibility only to use public money on firms which don't bring the entire profession into disrepute.

For a high profile lawyer he really doesn't come across as erudite or articulate as you would expect. That second letter seems like a load of waffle designed to detract from the issue. I've heard that he turns up at tribunals badly prepared and then gets them adjourned (ie more ££££ for parents to fork out for another day). I am not sure why tribunals would let him get away with it.

He's allowed to say he won a recent case.

The approx. date, that it was an ABA case, is more of a grey area as it starts to identify (ABA cases are relatively rare).

No-one cares too much about these things having been tweeted though.

user I am not a lawyer so I can't answer the legal aspect of his comments.

However a SEN charity who do have legally qualified staff (not sure if employed or pro bono) have publicly stated that the tweets are against para 6 of the SRA Code of Conduct. They have advised parents to complain to the SRA specifically against this paragraph.

They have also advised that if parents are involved in current cases where BS are acting for the LA, the parents should include in their evidence bundle all the screen shots and subsequent fiasco. I presume with the intention of having BS barred from the hearing.

TBH rural given that his original 'defence' was that people were tweeting insults and threats to his family, and the fact that people checked out his timeline and found it to be false, I'm not altogether convinced about the email story.

Certainly I know he has a very create way with words.

creative

Is anyone seriously suggesting that LAs should not go to solicitors with a track record of success before Tribunals which reduces their spend?

If you were an employer taken to Tribunal would you prefer a solicitor with a history of success in defeating claims or one without that record?

If you pay Council Tax would you rather your council defended claims through a more successful or a less successful solicitor?

Why should the applicants be able to say "We act in person therefore the LA must not be represented?"

These people may not be in the frame to win a gold medal for charm but let's keep our feet on the ground. The LA is defending a claim against public funds and must he allowed to do so in the way it considers most effective.

'I've heard that he turns up at tribunals badly prepared and then gets them adjourned (ie more ££££ for parents to fork out for another day).'

This is a strategy not a lack of preparation.

'I am not sure why tribunals would let him get away with it.'

Because when he loses he always appeals, so the FTT want a proper run with correct paperwork.

'The LA is defending a claim against public funds and must he allowed to do so in the way it considers most effective.'

Even if that involves strategies such as lying in court, bringing in spurious laws, filibustering, training up LA staff in propaganda designed to encourage them to be hostile to parents, demanding a string of telephone case-management calls before the hearing to establish such things as 'where the appellants live' to delay the hearing and to impose the stress of solicitor costs or having to cope unrepresented?

Protecting the public purse isn't the same thing as keeping it from the people who are entitled to it.

And for the track record, BS isn't hired to win, but to destroy families.

I don't think anyone is seriously suggestion that Andrew. I'm questioning if it is an effective use of public funds in a situation where 85% of parents win. As I said before, if I proposed hiring external lawyers for an informal inquisitorial Tribunal against a litigant in person in a non-exceptional case my boss would think me insane. My tentative conclusion is that the Tribunals should be jumping on time wasting and bullying tactics but suspect there are no "wasted costs" type sanctions they can use to do that in these particular Tribunals.

No. Costs are rarely awarded because SENDIST is supposed to be a non-adversarial informal and accessible process that parents should be able to navigate themselves, and therefore there is an insistence that they don't need representation.

The informal nature actually goes against parents however, as there appears to be a lackadaisical approach when paperwork is sloppy or mistakes are made. This is almost never the case with the parental paperwork because they invest every cell in their body into getting it right because their child's future can rest on it.

To attend unrepresented to defend your child's right to an education, to be faced with an aggressive LA lawyer with sloppy paperwork that the tribunal panel tell him off for but without penalty, and to subsequently face the prospect of an adjournment, when the parents have already paid considerably for childcare, travel and often expert witnesses (because the LA ones have been advised to be economical with the truth) is brutal and unfair.

There have been no complaints about other companies, and the complaints about this one are not about his 'wins' or the stresses related to a fair hearing where discussions can become stressful and questions difficult.

Starlight - absolutely. So eloquently put.

As an aside, there is at least one firm who acts for parents who I would avoid, precisely because of their reputation for a bullish approach and tendency to try to get adjournments. A good solicitor will be efficient and stick to the legal facts of the case. They will, in fact want to avoid a tribunal and try their hardest to get a satisfactory outcome which does not require tribunal.

And in case anyone DOES think I'm deranged, this is worth a look:

www.hertsparentcarers.org.uk/hpci-statement-on-bakersmall/

'If you were an employer taken to Tribunal would you prefer a solicitor with a history of success in defeating claims or one without that record?'

The point is that this firm isn't actually very successful. Their main aim seems to be to slow everything down and draw out the process so it's dragged out for already stressed parents.

Tribunals are hard enough for parents at the best of times. I ended up spending time in a psych ward after ours which was in part due to the stress of having to deal with hostile LA representatives (although at least they didn't tell lies).

Just to clarify, the 740k shareholders funds available will be what is left over after tax, dividends and salaries are taken out. I have just had my accounts published, the new abbreviated accounts rules mean that it has to be shown.
Unless my accountant has done my accounts all wrong.

That is what is left over for the shareholders.

And yes Starlight very creative with words. I have hurt my back so have been laid up and following this since pretty much the first tweet. Every few minutes I have been doing a search for other tweets, not once have I seen a tweet that involved his family. That was a complete lie to act the victim.

I believe that the email is made up too. I wouldn't use any solicitor who used 'LOL' anyway.

He is on LBC now, snivelling liar.

Starlight I missed your post about the creative timeline. I think Augusta's eloquent post on that hits the nail on the head. It won't help him with the SRA if he's shown to be lying about that.

It staggers me the lies that are still coming from him. I haven't managed to listen to the radio so I'm referring here to his conduct on Sunday morning on Twitter when he implied it was an underling and then this mornings statement on the website

Still, in the meantime more and more LAs are distancing themselves from him. I've lost track of who has so far but think it's as follows

Norfolk Press statement

Herts reviewing

Cambridge - not using for new cases

Essex - SEN Tribunal work is already in house (wasn't when I went to tribunal and BS last used by Essex in 2014). No future plans to use BS

Gloucestershire to consider BS services

Bucks have suspended BS

I'm actually now loosing track as so many councils are now tweeting.

I have already emailed one complaint to the SRA about the tweets. I will shortly being doing another email about his timeline

Telegraph

Independent

One of Mark Small's ex employees is tweeting about this,not in a supportive way to him either.

It has at least highlighted the huge sums councils pay to 'fight' parents over the support requested for chdren with SEN.