The Post Office scandal has at last produced disciplinary charges against solicitors, though not the sort many campaigners had been waiting for.
The SRA has named Jane MacLeod, the former Post Office general counsel, and Nick Gould as the first two solicitors sent to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in connection with Horizon. The allegations are tied to conduct after the main scandal had already burst into daylight. .
MacLeod is cited over failing to cooperate fully with Sir Wyn Williams’ public inquiry, after declining to give oral evidence. The inquiry had offered to meet travel costs from Australia and to hear from her remotely. Gould, who acted for sub-postmasters in the work to overturn convictions, faces allegations about how he charged for later work. The details will need to be tested before the tribunal. Charges are not findings.
For readers outside the profession, the SDT is the solicitors’ disciplinary court. It can fine, suspend or strike off solicitors where misconduct is proved. Its work is separate from the public inquiry and separate from any criminal investigation. That separation matters because lawyers like their lanes clearly marked, preferably with cones and a laminated flowchart.
The SRA says these cases can proceed because they are unlikely to prejudice the inquiry or criminal work. That explains the timing. It also explains why the charges may disappoint those expecting immediate action against lawyers involved in the prosecutions themselves. The regulator still has more than 20 live investigations linked to the scandal. The Bar Standards Board has its own work under way.
The legal point is professional accountability after institutional failure. Lawyers are not mere passengers inside corporate disasters. General counsel advise, warn, record, challenge and sometimes fail to do those things with enough force. External lawyers who act for vulnerable people also carry duties beyond getting the paperwork moving. Horizon has made those truths painfully expensive.
There is a wider market lesson for in-house teams. The general counsel’s job is often sold as commercial, strategic and pragmatic. All true. It is also a job built around saying no when everyone else has already arranged the chairs for yes. The research world has started calling this the price of saying no. Horizon shows the price of not being heard, or not being loud enough.
The first prosecutions do not close the book. They open a procedural chapter that may feel too narrow for the human scale of the harm.
Still, after years of public outrage, lawyers are no longer only narrators of the Post Office scandal. Some are now in the dock built for their own profession.
The public will judge the disciplinary process by pace and focus. These first charges show movement, but they also show how carefully regulators are stepping around the inquiry and possible criminal work. That may be legally sensible. It also means the people harmed by Horizon are still waiting for the larger professional question: who inside the legal chain helped a defective system keep its authority for so long?
Author: Marcello Williams
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