Written by The reported SDT decision to revoke the SRA rebuke of solicitor Liam Connolly is more than a narrow disciplinary outcome. It raises a practical question for the profession: how should solicitors draft settlement terms where client complaints, regulatory reporting rights and without prejudice negotiations overlap?
Publication snapshot
- The article considers a reported SDT appeal decision concerning an SRA rebuke arising from settlement wording.
- The central regulatory issue is whether settlement terms can appear to restrict a client’s ability to report concerns to the SRA or another public-interest body.
- The reported outcome turned on proportionality, mistake, prompt correction and the absence of dishonesty or identified harm.
- The wider professional issue is not only sanction level, but drafting discipline and public confidence in legal regulation.
- The practical lesson is clear: settlement wording should expressly preserve regulatory reporting rights where any risk of ambiguity exists.
Why this decision matters
The reported decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to revoke the SRA’s rebuke of solicitor Liam Connolly has significance beyond the individual sanction. At its centre was a settlement offer to a client who had raised service complaints. The wording included a provision addressing “any regulatory action”, which the client understood as an attempt to discourage reporting to the SRA.
The reported SDT outcome was that the rebuke was disproportionate. The tribunal was said to have accepted that the breach arose from a genuine mistake, that the wording was promptly revised once the concern was raised, and that the case did not involve dishonesty or identified harm.
That outcome may be fair on the particular facts. But the case still exposes a recurring professional risk. Settlement wording that touches regulatory reporting can create an appearance of pressure even where the solicitor did not intend to prevent a complaint.
The regulatory line in settlement offers
The relevant professional principle is straightforward. Solicitors must not attempt to prevent anyone from providing information to the SRA or another body exercising public-interest regulatory, supervisory, investigatory or prosecutory functions.
The difficulty arises in practice where parties are resolving a complaint, negotiating compensation, or trying to draw a line under a dispute. A settlement can properly address civil claims, service complaints, costs complaints and confidentiality. It cannot properly be used to stop, chill or obscure a person’s right to provide information to a regulator.
That distinction should be visible on the face of the document. Where a client is dissatisfied, vulnerable, unfamiliar with regulatory language, or dealing with a solicitor who holds greater legal knowledge, ambiguity is not neutral. It can alter how the client understands their options.
How a drafting problem becomes a regulatory problem
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A settlement clause is drafted broadly enough to appear to cover complaints, reports or regulatory action.
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The client reads the wording as limiting their ability to approach the SRA or another body.
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The solicitor says the wording was not intended to have that effect.
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The regulator or tribunal must then assess intent, effect, seriousness, remediation and public confidence.
The safer course is not complicated. If settlement wording could be read as limiting escalation, it should include an express carve-out preserving the client’s right to report matters to the SRA, the Legal Ombudsman, a court, a law-enforcement body or any other competent authority.
Without prejudice privilege is not a shield for regulatory ambiguity
Without prejudice privilege serves an important function. It allows parties to negotiate settlement without every concession becoming a weapon in later litigation. That protection matters because disputes often resolve only when parties can speak candidly.
But privilege is not a licence to include terms that may deter regulatory reporting. Nor should the label “without prejudice” be allowed to blur the difference between settling a private dispute and interfering with the public-interest flow of information to a regulator.
Parties may compromise civil claims, costs issues, service complaints and agreed confidentiality within lawful and professionally proper limits.
A client’s ability to provide information to the SRA or another public-interest body should remain clear, preserved and unpressured.
The reported decision appears to have turned partly on the tribunal’s assessment that the wording was a mistake rather than a calculated attempt to prevent a report. That distinction matters. However, it does not remove the need for better drafting discipline across the profession.
A solicitor does not need to intend impropriety for a clause to create regulatory risk. The question is also how the wording is likely to be understood by the client, particularly where the solicitor is resolving a complaint about their own conduct or service.
Proportionality and public confidence
The reported SDT decision also raises a second issue: how regulators should balance individual fairness against public confidence. A rebuke is a formal disciplinary outcome. If the evidence supports only an inadvertent error, promptly corrected, with no dishonesty and no harm, a tribunal may properly conclude that a rebuke is disproportionate.
That does not mean the underlying issue is trivial. The public does not judge legal regulation only by the outcome in one case. It also asks whether the profession takes client vulnerability, power imbalance and access to regulators seriously.
The public-confidence problem is sharper where a client is being asked to settle a complaint with the very professional whose conduct, service or wording has become the issue. A client may not distinguish between a private settlement term, a confidentiality clause, a without prejudice label and a regulatory reporting right. Solicitors should assume that ambiguity will be read against professional accountability.
Practical lessons for the profession
The lesson is not that solicitors should avoid settlement. Nor is it that every mistaken clause should produce disciplinary action. The better lesson is that client complaint settlements need cleaner drafting, clearer carve-outs and firmer internal review before they are sent.
Drafting controls
- Avoid wording that could be read as restricting reports to regulators, ombudsmen, courts or law-enforcement bodies.
- Use express carve-outs for regulatory reporting rights where confidentiality or settlement clauses are included.
- Separate settlement of private claims from public-interest reporting rights.
- Use plain language where the client is unrepresented or has raised service complaints.
- Record the rationale for any clause touching complaints, confidentiality or escalation.
Compliance controls
- Require supervisory review before sending complaint-settlement wording to clients.
- Train fee earners on the difference between confidentiality, privilege and regulatory reporting.
- Treat client concerns about restrictive wording as compliance alerts, not as negotiation irritation.
- Correct ambiguous wording promptly and transparently.
- Review templates after any complaint, rebuke, appeal or regulatory criticism.
Those steps protect clients, but they also protect solicitors. A clear carve-out can prevent a misunderstanding from becoming a regulatory allegation, a template review, an appeal, or a public-confidence problem.
The closing point
The reported revocation of the rebuke may show the importance of proportionality in disciplinary decision-making. It may also show that the SRA must reason carefully when characterising aggravating factors and assessing seriousness.
But the wider professional point remains. Settlement communications involving dissatisfied clients must be drafted with regulatory rights in mind. Where a clause could appear to discourage a client from reporting to the SRA, the drafting has already failed its practical test.
The profession should treat this decision as a reminder rather than a loophole. Without prejudice negotiations can resolve disputes. They should not leave clients uncertain about whether they remain free to speak to the regulator.