Discipline Tribunal allows solicitor facing 21 negligence claims to retain practising certificate

The Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal is back in the dock for failing to adequately protect consumers from rogue solicitors, this time, the dishonour falls to solicitor John G O’Donnell from Glasgow, who, facing over 21 negligence claims from clients, has been allowed to retain his practicing certificate by the SSDT and Law Society of Scotland. (No wonder the public think the Law Society and SSDT are both crooked ! – Ed)

Peter Cherbi’s “Diary of Injustice in Scotland” law blog reports on the case :

Law Society ‘puppet’ tribunal allows crooked lawyer to remain in practice as fraud levels soar in Scots legal profession

Law Society puppet tribunals protect crooked lawyers. Consumers of legal services in Scotland remain as unprotected as ever from the crooked element of the Scottish legal profession, as the media report the latest failure of self regulation by the Law Society of Scotland & the Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal, that of allowing well known solicitor John G O’Donnell, from Glasgow, to remain in practice, despite a trail of client complaints and deception stretching back years.

Sunday Mail previous report on claims against John G O’Donnell. Mr O' Donnell, is still facing over 21 client claims for negligence against his work as a solicitor, but while the SSDT and the Law Society have pursued the complaints, and issued one of the weakest punishments available to them, the damages claims for negligence, which are being handled by the Law Society's infamously corrupt Master Insurance Policy remain to be settled, and as one ex-member of staff from the Law Society said this morning "will probably take years to settle".

You can read the full Discipline Tribunal report here : SSDT findings on John G O'Donnell or, alternatively, HERE

The Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal decision : “The Tribunal find John Gerard O’Donnell, 15 Clarkston Road, Glasgow; Find the Respondent guilty of Professional Misconduct in respect of his failure to comply with undertakings given to an individual and that individual’s solicitor, his unreasonable delay in having a lease completed and registered and his misleading the individual and the individual’s solicitor in that regard and his failure to advise the individual and the individual’s solicitor of the true position, his failure to comply with the guidelines on mandates 1998, his misleading the Law Society and his unreasonable delay on a number of occasions in responding to the reasonable enquiries of the Law Society.”

.. and for all that, no fine, and only a restricted practising certificate !

Philip Yelland, in charge of standards at Law Society for years, but still plenty of John G O’Donnells & Andrew Penmans. As you can see from the decision handed down by the puppet Discipline Tribunal, Mr O’Donnell, like many other solicitors who handle their clients affairs so badly, has been allowed to remain in practice, and the only reason this case got to the Tribunal was because the Sunday Mail was keeping tabs on the case. If there had been no media attention, it is highly likely that Mr O’Donnell, just like many other lawyers, some even charged with criminal offences, would have walked free after a complaints whitewash from his legal colleagues at the Law Society of Scotland.

It is of note there is not one shred of concern for the clients or their many claims for negligence, currently being strung out, delayed, meddled with, fiddled with, and generally wiped out by the dirty tricks department of the Law Society, of which many of us have come to know and experience over the years.

You can read more about how the Law Society deals with negligence claims made against Scottish solicitors here : Lawyers negligence insurance branded corrupt, anti-consumer as evidence reveals only one per cent of clients get chance of payout

SLCC of no help to victims of O'Donnell. Asked today if the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission would be of any help to the many victims of Mr O'Donnell, a legal insider said "The Scottish Legal Complaints Commission are about as much use as a dead duck. They have spent most of their time so far doing what is best for themselves, and have passed most complaints back to the Law Society simply because they are too hot to handle."

He went on "I don't see how the SLCC can justify their existence when all they have done is grumble about the size of their salaries, threaten to resign just because they had no Personal Insurance cover, and are trying to avoid taking up most of their responsibilities to protect clients from the likes of O'Donnell, while charging the legal profession and soaking up public money like a sponge."

Sensationally a retired solicitor, sickened by the constant scandals within the legal profession spoke out last night, warning the public they would have to do more against crooked lawyers or face their own legal problems when they needed a solicitor.

He said : "As long as solicitors don't fear regulation, there will always be 'crooked lawyers' out there getting away with whatever they can. Just look at what Mr O'Donnell has been up to, and the time it has taken the Law Society and the SSDT to do something, which at the end of the day amounted to a slap on the wrist."

Scottish Government accused of looking the other way on crooked lawyers. He also went on to accuse civil servants within the Scottish Government, and politicians of allowing the legal profession to circumvent the rights of clients whenever they felt like it. He said : "I was a solicitor for 30 years, and its no secret among us the Law Society, civil servants & Ministers within the Scottish Government share a common purpose in preventing fully independent regulation from being a reality and ensuring proper oversight of what you regularly describe, with some justification, as a thoroughly corrupt legal profession."

Strangely enough, I have reported on that subject nearly two years ago : Justice Secretary rejects independent regulation of lawyers and public right of choice in legal services market

An official with a consumer group said : "If you think about it, it's almost as if paedophiles can call up Government Ministers or civil servants and get them to drop charges against them. That is the extent of what happens between the Law Society and Scotland's elected lawmakers. A cosy relationship that neither wish to end because its been so profitable to both in the past, and be warned, they will do anything to protect it."

Here is an example of just how far that relationship between the Law Society and the Scottish Government goes :

Kenny MacAskill defends the O’Donnell’s of his beloved legal profession at all costs, regardless of their victims plight.

Exclusive: Watchdogs force one of country's worst lawyers out of firm

Apr 19 2009 By Russell Findlay

ONE OF Scotland’s worst lawyers has been forced out of business by legal watchdogs. John O’Donnell, 58, was accused of having “contempt” for the Law Society of Scotland by repeatedly snubbing clients and ignoring complaints.

He has been banned from working unsupervised for five years by the Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal (SSDT). It means he can no longer run his own law firm but can still work as a lawyer.

Legal reformer Peter Cherbi of Injustice Scotland said: “This lawyer is unfit to practise and should have been struck off. Instead he gets a slap on the wrist. “Again the Law Society and SSDT have failed to protect the public. This shows self-regulation doesn’t work.”

The Sunday Mail first exposed O’Donnell five years ago when cops probing an alleged money laundering gang raided his John G O’Donnell & Co office in Cathcart, Glasgow.

We revealed he faced at least 21 negligence complaints and compensation claims of more than £1million. But it took until last year for the SSDT to find him guilty of six counts of misconduct including breaching money laundering rules. O’Donnell claimed he suffered depression but had a clean bill of health and got off with a £500 fine.

He was finally forced out of business by an SSDT ruling in February, details of which were only released last week at the Sunday Mail’s request.

The SSDT found he lied to clients, their lawyers and the Law Society, and said they were “not convinced” by his explanations. They added: “It is imperative solicitors are honest at all times.”

One legal source said: “He got away with playing the sickness card for years. “This smacks of too little, too late.”

O’Donnell, who did not return our calls for comment, is trying to sell his business before the ban begins on June 1 but can still advertise his services until then.

A legal insider said: “This guy was subject to discipline last year. “Yet he is trusted to wind up the affairs of his clients and none of them are aware of what is happening.”

Law Society of Scotland is ‘World’s Worst Regulator’

The Law Society of Scotland, as we all know, isn’t the world’s best regulator .. hence all the trouble over the years it has caused those among the profession who keep their nose clean, by also keeping the bad apples in the bunch.

Peter Cherbi’s “A Diary of Injustice in Scotland” law blog goes a little further into the Law Society’s performance, and finds its actually one of the world’s worst regulators, with the same faces still at the Law Society despite all the scandals over the years ... (which would be like keeping Sir Fred Goodwin on at the RBS after its collapse, wouldn't it ? - Ed) …

Toxic levels of complaints, poor standards of service & soaring fraud by solicitors makes Law Society of Scotland 'World's worst regulator'

Crooked lawyers give Scotland a bad name. While the attention of most remains focussed on the crisis in the banking system, the problems which have caused the collapse of our great financial institutions are nothing new to Scotland's legal sector. Year in year out, clients have been losing millions of pounds of their money to , ambitions, greedy, and downright crooked lawyers over the past couple of decades, and the regulator responsible, the Law Society of Scotland, has done little or nothing about it.

A crooked lawyer’s tangled web of deceit. During 1991, one of the most famous cases of fraud by the Scots legal profession occurred with revelations that John McCabe, a solicitor working at the now defunct Edinburgh firm of Scott Moncrieff & Dove Lockhart, operated a multi million pound fraud scam against clients & banks, which ultimately was discovered after he became careless and so entrenched in deceit & debt, there was simply no place left to run (although he did try running to Uruguay). While clients stood ruined, and banks took huge losses, the Law Society of Scotland could only watch on as the press of the day mauled both the legal profession and the poor standards of regulation which allowed McCabe to get away with what he did, and ultimately, McCabe was jailed for 10 years for his crimes.

Just imagine for a minute, if every one of the 10,000 lawyers in Scotland stole £4million from their clients. What would be done about it ? .. well nothing much, as long as the Law Society has anything to do with regulating lawyers …

Law Society Chief Kenneth Pritchard failed on reforms. Amid the recriminations of the McCabe case, and the costs of compensating his victims, the Law Society's Kenneth Pritchard (now a Sheriff), promised reforms to ensure no repetition, and that standards would rise in Scotland's legal profession to ensure public confidence remained in solicitors.

Kenneth Pritchard : “The aim of the new rules … is not to help the legal profession shrug off an obligation to meet losses, but to reduce the amount the Guarantee Fund might have to repay. "It should become much more difficult for solicitors to defraud clients. “There is not a reluctance among solicitors to pay this money. there is an acceptance that we must do so to maintain the good name and standing of the profession.". What good name ?

Law Society Chief Pritchard performs a u-turn & orders legal firm to drop 'crooked lawyers' case. However, three years on in 1994, the same Law Society Chief, Kenneth Pritchard who had promised reforms to prevent crooked lawyers hurting their clients, was revealed to have personally intervened in a case of litigation against a firm of crooked lawyers, ordering the clients solicitors to withdraw from acting, letting the crooked lawyers off the hook in a policy of protection for crooked lawyers.

Court documents revealed Law Chief's duplicity. Kenneth Pritchard wrote to legal firm Skene Edwards advising them to withdraw from acting in the case, and that letter was subsequently discussed in the Scottish Parliament debate chamber by Cabinet Secretary for Business John Swinney.

You can read more about how the Law Society of Scotland and Kenneth Pritchard did nothing to stem the rising tide of crooked lawyers, and actually closed ranks with crooked lawyers to protect them from punishment while denying clients access to justice, here : Law Society intervention in claims 'commonplace' as ex Chief admits Master Policy protects solicitors against clients

After the exploits of McCabe, the Law Society of Scotland professed to have 'cleaned up Scotland's legal profession, but much worse was to come as the following demonstrates.

Borders lawyer Andrew Penman became Scotland's most famous crooked lawyer. From 1994 to the present day, my own battle with the Law Society of Scotland ended up in the press, showing yet again the Law Society of Scotland would simply close ranks with crooked lawyers to protect them from client complaints & financial claims for dishonesty & fraud. Indeed, the Law Society went out of its way in a determined effort to prevent me from obtaining legal representation and access to the courts to pursue Penman and his legal firm Stormonth Darling solicitors, for the untold damage it did to my family. Nothing then had changed - there were still plenty of crooked lawyers in business, and the Law Society of Scotland still covered up for crooked lawyers no matter what.

Proposals since 1999 to bring independent regulation to lawyers were blocked by Law Society. The legacy of Andrew Penman, and the cover up by the Law Society of his actions was felt by all solicitors just as in the McCabe case, and assisted with the drive to bring about independent regulation of lawyers and end the closed shop operated by the Law Society of Scotland that allowed thousands of complaints to be binned while investigations were whitewashed.

2006, and still plenty crooked lawyers in Scotland. Things are now so bad in Scotland that many solicitors & legal firms have 'toxic levels of client complaints & claims' for poor legal service, rendering the use of Scots solicitors a dangerous game of Russian roulette for consumers, where selecting the worst of a bad bunch can see you end up financially ruined and your lives destroyed by a greedy lawyer out to take as much as possible, safe in the knowledge his regulator, the Law Society of Scotland, will do nothing to help members of the public.

Lawyers staged mafia hit on one of their own. Indeed the corruption of Scotland's legal profession became so entrenched, the Law Society's own Chief Accountant, Leslie Cumming, was subject to a mafia hit, staged by crooked lawyers in an attempt it has since been claimed to put off investigations into crooked lawyers .. and while the then Law Society Chief Douglas Mill was busy blaming clients for the attack on Cumming, it became clear to all the motives for the attack came from within the ranks of Scotland's solicitors, who had become so evil they would consider and use murder hits to escape justice for their vast network of corruption against clients.

2007, and even more crooked lawyers. The media coverage of countless scandals within the Scots legal establishment, and the Law Society’s seeming ability to whitewash any crooked lawyer, no matter the crimes they had committed, ultimately brought about the creation of legislation passed in 2007 to 'improve' regulation of the legal profession, however the 'independent' Scottish legal Complaints Commission which was created as a result of the LPLA (Scotland) Act 2007 has since been co-opted by the Law Society, and is mired in many scandals itself, as the legal profession fights back to retain its crooked regulatory powers over crooked lawyers.

Let us finally take a look at some of the people who have perpetuated this disgraceful state of affairs the Scots legal services market finds itself in :

Douglas Mill, ex-Chief Exec. of the Law Society. Douglas Mill, recently famed on television for supporting Sir Fred Goodwin who brought RBS to its knees, made no bones about it, he had no time for clients who complained against crooked lawyers, and saw it as his mission to interfere in complaints & financial claims against crooked lawyers. Mill horrendously hounded clients who dared make a complaint against a solicitor, and personally saw to it that attempts at legal action against solicitors failed at every turn, even demanding legal aid be refused to anyone seeking to take a lawyer to court.

Philip Yelland, Head of Client Relations. During all this time, and all these scandals, one man has been the key to ‘Client Relations’ at the Law Society of Scotland, Mr Philip Yelland, who has presided over scandal after scandal, where curiously many of the crooked lawyers got off the hook, or investigations were simply whitewashed, while the Law Society saw to it members of the public were denied access to justice and a solicitor to try and pursue the thousands of McCabes and Penmans for the damage they did to many clients.

Michael Clancy, Director of Law Reform. Despite the hundreds of ‘crooked lawyer’ scandals in the last two decades, and all the promises of reform from the Law Society itself, nothing has been done to help thousands of people with outstanding cases against crooked lawyers, and some at the Law Society such as Michael Clancy, have come down hard against any proposals to bring in Parliament or new legislation to help clean up the legal profession’s sins of the past.

You can read my own proposals, in effect. a “Truth & Reconciliation” proposal for the Law Society’s sins of the past here : The polluter pays - Why cleaning up lawyers sins of the past would be good for the public & legal profession alike

We are now at a point where no matter the scale of corruption in Scotland’s legal services market, nothing will bring the reforms and consumer protection that all Scots and consumers of legal services in this country should have. The feeling now by many is that when someone goes to a lawyer, the odds are they are going to get ripped off, and with lawyers experiencing a marked downturn in legal business, levels of fraud against clients through faked up legal fees and menacing demands for expenses on work not carried out are sharply rising.

If we are to have good regulation of legal services in Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland and those associated with it, presently or formerly, cannot be allowed anywhere near such a body, as the crop of scandals at the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission show very clearly.

As long as we have a Justice Secretary who says he will protect lawyers from much needed reforms, the Scots public will always take second place to the criminal element of society that walks around with a Law Society of Scotland membership badge, professing to offer the best in legal services when in reality they offer levels of toxicity to consumers that Chemistry could never hope to define.