Matthew Roy Church

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Matthew Roy Church, a newly qualified solicitor in the Wills and Probate department at Harvey Copping & Harrison LLP, dealt with Lasting Powers of Attorney for elderly/vulnerable clients (Persons A1, B1, C1). When the OPG rejected LPAs due to execution errors, he re-dated the documents to false later dates and resubmitted them without the donors actually re-signing, knowing the dates were misleading (allegation 1.1). He also told Persons A2 and C2 that applications had been submitted to the OPG weeks earlier when he knew this was misleading (allegations 1.2, 1.3). He admitted dishonesty on allegations 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. He denied dishonesty but admitted recklessness on allegation 1.4 (telling the Firm he had met Person A1 in December 2021). The matter was resolved on the papers by agreed outcome. The Tribunal found dishonesty established and, finding no exceptional circumstances, struck him off the Roll and ordered £1,000 costs.

Duties found breached:

• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues

Aggravating factors:

• Conduct was dishonest
• Misconduct was deliberate, occurred over a period of time and was repeated
• Conduct undertaken to conceal his own errors
• Breach of a position of trust
• Harm to vulnerable clients who placed trust in him
• Court of Protection/OPG misled or risk of misleading
• Direct control of/responsibility for the circumstances
• Ought to have known conduct was in material breach of obligations

Mitigating factors:

• Open and frank admissions at an early stage and full cooperation with the SRA
• No material personal benefit gained
• Newly qualified with 1-2 years PQE
• Otherwise clean record
• Chaotic working environment during COVID with poor systems
• Felt poorly trained and had almost non-existent supervision after qualification