Junior lawyer struck off after false 100-hour billing claims

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that while employed at Hudgell Solicitors, Clare Elizabeth Forster falsely recorded billable time across four client matters between June and November 2023.

As a fee-earner, the firm expected her to record 125 chargeable client matters per month to meet a target of 1,500 client matter hours per year, with work billed on an hourly rate basis and claim values ranging from £5,000 to £50,000 (approximately $9,440–$94,400).

After six months at the national law firm, the tribunal heard that her manager observed her working late into the evening on client matters.

When the concern was raised directly, Forster allegedly responded that she was “aware her time recording had not reached her targets” and that she was working late in an effort to make up the shortfall.

The tribunal heard that the applicant had raised concerns from the outset of Forster’s employment, noting that her time recording “gave rise to concern”, with evidence showing that between November 2022 and April 2023 she averaged just 87.7 chargeable hours per month – a shortfall of approximately 30 per cent.

The firm expressed that, in response to concerns about her ability to meet targets, it “adopted a supportive and measured approach” to address her performance difficulties.

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Forster was no longer allocated new cases to allow her to focus on her existing caseload and was also set a reduced target of 100 chargeable hours, down from 125, until July 2023, when it was intended she would return to the benchmark target rate.

During this time, an informal meeting was held between Forster and the head of clinical negligence, with the tribunal hearing she was reassured that, given her lower hourly rate, it was “entirely acceptable for tasks to take her longer to complete”.

However, despite this reduction, Forster’s time recording continued to fall further in the months that followed, ultimately resulting in her being placed on a formal performance improvement plan.

A few months later, Forster reported personal difficulties that led to a short period of sick leave, with the tribunal hearing that while her manager “responded with sympathy”, her time recording was said to have “deteriorated further” during this period.

Against this background, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) alleged that Forster had engaged in “planned and repeated course of dishonest conduct” by falsely recording time for four separate instances, all of which she admitted.

One of the instances before the tribunal occurred on 6 November 2023, when she recorded 43 units of time on a client matter and, when questioned about the absence of a supporting file note, claimed it had been lost due to an IT issue.

When questioned about the blank documents linked to the time entries across the four instances, Forster admitted she had recorded time for work she intended to complete later, attributing her conduct to the pressure of meeting time-recording targets.

While she admitted to acting dishonestly, Forster fought against being struck off, with her representative pointing to what they described as “significant personal challenges” at the time – said to have had a “profound and lasting impact” on her mental health and, in turn, “affected her ability to concentrate and to function effectively in the workplace”.

Forster also argued that the firm had imposed “unreasonable and oppressive demands” on her, pointing to requirements to meticulously log activities throughout the day, and claiming that her pattern of recording time late at night and on weekends should have served as a “red flag” that she was struggling.

While the tribunal accepted that her misconduct arose “primarily” from personal pressures rather than financial gain and that no client suffered financial or procedural loss it ultimately found that her conduct had developed into a “planned approach”.

“Over a period of approximately five months, her behaviour crystallised into a planned approach involving repeated acts of falsifying timesheets across multiple client files, accompanied by an element of concealment through an untrue explanation that an IT failure had caused the loss of the relevant file note,” the tribunal said.

While the tribunal acknowledged that her mental health had “fluctuated”, it was not persuaded that these difficulties had impaired her ability to make rational decisions or to “distinguish right from wrong”.

It concluded that her conduct possessed “dishonesty, it was deliberate, calculated, and repeated”.

The tribunal ordered that Foster be struck off the roll and pay £25,000 (approximately $47,200) in costs – a reduction of £11,000 from the amount originally sought by the SRA.