Matthew Roy Church

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

Matthew Roy Church, a newly qualified solicitor at Harvey Copping & Harrison LLP, caused or allowed Lasting Powers of Attorney for vulnerable clients to be submitted to the OPG with misleading signature dates to conceal execution errors, and made misleading statements to clients about the progress of applications. He admitted dishonesty regarding allegations 1.1-1.3 and recklessness regarding 1.4. The Tribunal approved the agreed outcome and struck him off the Roll, ordering him to pay £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
• Acted to conceal errors he had made
• Breach of a position of trust involving vulnerable clients
• Caused loss/harm to vulnerable people and risk of misleading the Court of Protection
• Ought reasonably 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 (non-agreed)
• Newly qualified with 1-2 years PQE (non-agreed)
• Clean record (non-agreed)
• Chaotic COVID-era working environment and poor supervision/training (non-agreed)