Two solicitors linked to Post Office scandal charged with misconduct
Two solicitors have been charged with alleged misconduct in relation to the Horizon IT scandal and have been referred to The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the legal regulator for English and Welsh solicitors, said it is taking action against Jane MacLeod, the former Post Office general counsel from 2015 to 2019, and Nick Gould, a partner who represented former sub-postmistress Seema Misra to overturn her conviction in 2021.
MacLeod was asked to appear before the Horizon IT public inquiry in 2024 to answer questions related to which internal documents were disclosed in the investigation and the advice she gave about how the case should be defended.
Gould was a corporate partner at firm Aria Grace Law until 7 February 2025 and has worked as a legal consultant at firm Impact Lawyers since.
‘We have referred two cases to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The cases refer to conduct that took place in the period after the main events of the Post Office Horizon scandal,” Jonathan Peddie, executive Director of investigations, enforcement and litigation at the SRA said.
“Our wider investigations are still ongoing. This includes issues relating directly to the Horizon scandal, where we are working closely with the Inquiry team and the Metropolitan Police. We can and will act if we find that solicitors we regulate fail to meet our standards,” Peddie added.
The Post Office scandal saw more than 900 subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted for theft and fraud between 1999 and 2009 due to faulty software developed by Fujitsu, a tech company.
It emerged in January last year, following MPs’ calls for transparency over legal fees, that a host of City law firms had raked in millions while many victims of the scandal were still awaiting their compensation payouts.
The Post Office has been represented by several law firms, most notably Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF), which advised on the Horizon IT scandal and related litigation, and Womble Bond Dickinson.
Burges Salmon and Fieldfisher were also appointed to represent the Post Office in the ongoing Horizon IT Inquiry, which finalised its hearing in December 2024.
The final inquiry report by Sir Wyn Williams is expected to be delivered this year.
Allegations of ‘a lack of integrity’
The charges come as part of 20 live investigations the SRA has had open into firms and solicitors that acted for the Post Office in the scandal, but it was not known who was under investigation until now.
In March, the SRA said the investigations include “serious allegations of solicitors acting with a lack of integrity” across several areas, with the probe’s main focus on solicitors’ management and supervision of the case, and the conduct of the litigation and wrongful prosecutions of sub-postmasters.