Fiona McKinnon

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

Fiona McKinnon, a Glasgow solicitor, was found guilty of professional misconduct (singly and in cumulo) on 12 January 2022 for an egregious 12-year failure to progress client MC's personal injury claim, failures to communicate with MC and former partner Alan Conroy, failure to provide client files (including MW's), failure to implement LG's mandate for over two years, and persistent failure to respond to the SLCC and Law Society. The Tribunal expressly noted there was no dishonesty or lack of integrity. It censured her and imposed a two-year restriction on her practising certificate (limiting her to acting as a qualified assistant under approved supervision) from 12 April 2022, finding suspension/strike off excessive and a fine inadequate to protect the public. She was found liable for the Complainers' and Tribunal's expenses (no figure stated). At a later compensation hearing on 10 May 2022, the Tribunal awarded £3,000 to MC and £5,000 to Alan Conroy under s.53(2)(bb), each with 8% interest.

Duties found breached:

• Act in the client's best interests
• Keep client informed and respond promptly
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report
• No improper communication with the court
• Proper termination and return of instructions

Aggravating factors:

• Lack of insight, with no explanation of why the misconduct occurred or steps to prevent recurrence
• Conduct involved multiple cases/clients and repeated failures persisting over many years
• Conduct likely to seriously damage the reputation of the profession and a danger to the public
• One affected client (MW) died before her complaint was resolved
• High risk of repetition; no steps taken to change practice

Mitigating factors:

• Clean record over a lengthy career with no previous conduct findings
• Cooperated (albeit at a late stage) with the Fiscal and entered into a Joint Minute
• Expressed contrition to her representative