Check out the primary source: https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/solicitor-check/160042/
The solicitor’s roll is not a cloakroom where reputation can be left while conduct gets into trouble outside.
A non-practising solicitor, Adrian Robert Berkeley, has been struck off after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found dishonesty in an email sent to the two sons of a mentally ill woman and in a separate stalking conviction. The case, reported on 24 July, is uncomfortable because it sits where professional title, vulnerability and personal conduct meet. That is never a pretty junction. The traffic lights are usually broken.
Berkeley had not practised since 2015, but remained on the roll and described himself as a non-practising solicitor while using his SRA number. The tribunal heard that he sent an email to the woman’s sons saying he had been instructed to replace them as next of kin, threatening possible claims and referring to a £500-an-hour rate for mental health law services. The SDT found there was no satisfactory evidence for the instructions he claimed. In plain English, the professional badge was being used to give the message weight it had not earned.
The stalking conviction added a second and darker platform to the case. The tribunal recorded that Berkeley had been convicted in June 2024 after a course of conduct involving messages, gifts, third-party contact and attending the complainant’s home. He received a suspended prison sentence. He did not engage with the disciplinary proceedings, which went ahead in his absence.
For readers new to solicitor discipline, strike-off means removal from the roll of solicitors. It is not a stern email from the regulator. It is the trapdoor. A struck-off solicitor cannot practise unless restored, and restoration is difficult because the profession treats dishonesty as a structural fault, not a chipped mug.
The case matters because it reminds the market that non-practising status does not switch off regulation. A solicitor may step away from client files, but the title still carries public meaning. If that title is used around a vulnerable person, families, hospitals or safeguarding teams may treat it seriously. That is exactly why misuse matters.
There is a sharper access-to-justice point too. McKenzie Friends and unregulated support services often exist because formal legal help is too expensive or too hard to find. Some provide real help. Others can become fog machines in already desperate cases. Vulnerable people and families need clear advice, not letters that arrive with legal perfume and a threat tucked behind the collar.
The tribunal ordered costs of £22,600. The bigger cost is professional trust. A solicitor’s name on the roll is meant to reassure the public, not make a bad situation look official.
The roll is a public register. It is not a place to shelter private chaos.
The practical result is that lawyers will need to explain the rule before the dispute hardens. Clients rarely care which procedural drawer a problem belongs in; they care who must act, who pays, and what happens if nobody moves quickly. That is where today’s legal movement becomes tomorrow’s advice.
Author: Thomas Greatbanks
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