Solicitor struck off for misleading clients, tribunal over 'IT issues'
Banerjee, who joined the profession in 2010 and worked at Peterborough firm Hunt and Coombs, told a June 2022 tribunal hearing she had only just received an email from the defendant’s lawyers due to problems with her email security system.
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Employment lawyer Alison Clare Banerjee, 60, has been struck off the roll after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) found she repeatedly acted dishonestly, including misleading an employment tribunal about alleged “IT issues.”
Banerjee, who joined the profession in 2010 and worked at Peterborough firm Hunt and Coombs, told a June 2022 tribunal hearing she had only just received an email from the defendant’s lawyers due to problems with her email security system. She claimed the Mimecast filter on her Microsoft Outlook had been partially disabled, causing messages to be held back without her knowledge.
However, her firm’s records showed no evidence she had raised an IT problem internally, and previous issues with Mimecast had been resolved two years earlier. Banerjee admitted at the SDT that her explanation to the tribunal was false.
The tribunal also heard she misled her client—identified as Client A—about a wasted costs order of £2,597.64, attributing it to “confusion” and promising to have it removed from the tribunal’s website. She further admitted settling Client A’s claim without instructions and deceiving two other clients in unrelated cases.
In mitigation, Banerjee said she told clients “what they wanted to hear” to stop persistent emails. The SDT ruled her conduct involved “serious, deliberate, and repeated acts of dishonesty” towards clients and the tribunal, and ordered her removal from the profession.
