A YORK solicitor has been struck off after acting dishonestly and overcharging a client by £50,000.
Philip Crowe’s hourly rate of £750 while working as a trustee was “unconscionable and dwarfs the rate that even the senior partner of a City firm could conceivably charge”.
An independent costs lawyer reported that “the amount which has been charged cannot conceivably represent work actually undertaken” and that at least £51,000 of the £71,000 Mr Crowe was paid was due to overcharging.
One bill, for £9,500 plus VAT, included the time spent attending his client’s funeral, which Mr Crowe believed, as a professional person, “was right at the time, and he still did not see there was anything wrong in charging for attending the funeral”.
Mr Crowe, who worked from Boroughbridge Road in York, had been a solicitor since 1977. He acknowledged his actions had been “injudicious” and the 79 year-old now thought he had continued in practice “beyond the time he should have continued”.
However a solicitors’ disciplinary tribunal found he had acted dishonestly in overcharging, in transferring money out of a client’s account for his own benefit and using the money to pay off a £120,000 business loan.
The three-person tribunal ordered Mr Crowe to be struck off and pay costs of £30,000.
