A legal professional has been disbarred after falsely claiming to work 28-hour days to secure a bonus nearing £70,000.
Samina Ahmed, a 46-year-old single mother of three, was found to have habitually exaggerated her work hours. On 133 separate occasions, she reported working more than 24 hours in a single day, as revealed during a tribunal.
With a 17-year tenure as a prison law solicitor at Tuckers Solicitors, Ms. Ahmed’s assignments involved assisting incarcerated individuals, funded by the Legal Aid Agency.
Despite receiving a warning about her deceitful practices during a staff meeting, she continued to manipulate her timesheets.
Consequently, she has been disbarred and ordered to cover £5,000 in legal costs, as the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal deemed her reported hours ‘impossible’.
Between July 2021 and June 2022, while stationed at the firm’s Manchester office, Ms. Ahmed recorded hours in the firm’s case management system that did not match the actual work she performed.
In that time, she recorded 7,511.70 hours over 266 days, which averages out at over 28 hours per day.
This also included 133 days for which she recorded more than 24 hours in a day.
Samina Ahmed, 46 and a single mother of three, routinely recorded that she worked more hours than she had, even saying that for 133 days she had worked more than 24 hours in a day, a tribunal heard.
A meeting was held in April 2022 after the company noticed the indiscretion, but Ms Ahmed, who trained new lawyers at the company, still carried on falsifying her time sheets.
She did this to claim the maximum bonus, which at Tuckers Solicitors could be up to 400 per cent of her usual salary.
This would have netted personally Ms Ahmed £69,300 had her scheme not been discovered in time.
The hours she supposedly worked were paid for by the Legal Aid Agency, totalling at £98,093, which had to be paid back by Tuckers Solicitors.
After she was found to continue falsifying her hours, Ms Ahmed was let go and hauled in front of a Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal.
There she was struck off the solicitors’ Roll and ordered to pay £5,000, which was reduced from £49,600 because she has since worked in retail jobs and for Wigan Council.
The Tribunal said: ‘[We] found that Ms Ahmed acted dishonestly and without integrity in recording time against matters where she had not and could not have completed the work claimed.
‘In so doing she had failed to uphold public trust and confidence in the profession.
‘The Tribunal found that the seriousness of Ms Ahmed’s dishonest conduct was at the highest level and the resulting, foreseeable harm, both to others and to the reputation of the profession, was such that the sanction of striking off the Roll was fair, reasonable and proportionate.
‘Ms Ahmed acknowledged that she was currently employed as an apprentice with Wigan Council and that her income was higher than when she had previously been employed in the retail sector.
‘She submitted, however, that her income barely covered her outgoings and that she remained in receipt of universal credit and child benefit. She was a single parent to three children.
‘The Tribunal took into account Ms Ahmed’s modest financial means and had regard to the case of Barnes.
‘The Tribunal did not consider that Ms Ahmed was entirely unable to meet a costs order in a reasonable period; however, it considered it appropriate to reduce the total amount of costs to reflect a fair contribution, taking into account Ms Ahmed’s limited means.’
