Lawyer Samina Ahmed, 46, fiddled her time sheets to say she worked more hours than she had in a bid to take home a £70,000 bonus – even putting herself down for 28 hours a day
A lawyer has been struck off after she falsely claimed she worked 28 hours a day in order to get a bumper bonus of almost £70,000.
Legal aid solicitor Samina Ahmed fiddled her time sheets and 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. She was warned against her fraudulent scheme at a staff meeting – but continued to claim over her hours.The mum-of-three has now been struck off and ordered to pay £5,000 in costs, with the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal saying her time sheets were ‘an impossibility’. Ms Ahmed, 46, had worked as a prison law solicitor at Tucker Solicitors for 17 years and was based at the firm’s Manchester office.
Because she worked with people in prisons, her work was paid for by the Legal Aid Agency, which is publicly funded. Her duties also included training new lawyers. The tribunal heard that between July 2021 and June 2022, Ms Ahmed recorded time on the company’s case management system that was over that she had completed – and would even put herself down for more hours than there is in a day.
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. A meeting was held in April 2022 after the company noticed the indiscretion, but she still carried on falsifying the time sheets. She did this to claim the maximum bonus – which at Tuckers Solicitors could be up to 400% of her usual salary, and could have earnt Ms Ahmed £69,300.
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 out to not have stopped after the meeting, Ms Ahmed was let go and brought in front of a Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal. She 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 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”.
They added: “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.”
