Catherine Jane Limbert (aka Williamson)

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

Catherine Jane Limbert (aka Williamson), admitted 1995, was a consultant solicitor at Cognitive Law Limited. The Tribunal approved an Agreed Outcome. She admitted: failing to follow the firm's client due diligence policy for five clients; making an untrue statement to her employer on a New Employee Questionnaire by denying she had ever been the subject of an SRA investigation when she was under investigation at the time (admitted to be dishonest); and holding £3,410 of client money in the account of Arbour Legal Ltd, an unregulated entity of which she was director and majority shareholder, with a minimum of £456 unaccounted for. The alleged aggravating factor of dishonesty regarding allegation 1.3 was denied and stayed on proportionality grounds. The Tribunal found her misconduct so serious that nothing less than striking off was appropriate, and ordered her struck off the Roll and to pay costs of £7,177.50.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• Segregate client money
• No improper use of client money
• Not misrepresent regulated status

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonest untrue statement to employer concerning her regulatory history
• Failure to protect client money by placing it in the account of an unregulated entity she controlled
• Repeated failures to obtain client identity documents
• Sum of at least £456 remains unaccounted for

Mitigating factors:

• Suffering from serious ill-health affecting decision making and was overworked (not agreed by SRA)
• Difficulties with handover of files from her previous firm (not agreed by SRA)
• Demonstrated insight and remorse through admissions (not agreed by SRA)