David Steven SORBAN

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

A 30-year-old solicitor created a false email by backdating it to appear it had been sent on 7 November 2007, sending it on 16 November 2007 to deceive his clients and the financier's solicitor about registration confirmation statements. The Tribunal found this amounted to professional misconduct because it involved dishonesty. Given his personal circumstances, full cooperation, contrition and the absence of pecuniary gain, the Tribunal imposed only a public reprimand and ordered costs of $1,500, declining to impose an additional pecuniary penalty or practice conditions.

Duties found breached:

• No baseless or threatened misconduct report

Aggravating factors:

• Conduct involved dishonesty and deception of clients and another practitioner
• Brought the financier's solicitor's integrity into question

Mitigating factors:

• No direct pecuniary gain
• Full cooperation with investigation
• Prompt contrition and written apology to financier's solicitor
• No other complaints before or after the incident
• Temporary lapse of judgment done on spur of moment due to pride/embarrassment
• Extremely heavy workload at the time
• No consequences for the financier
• Supportive affidavits from client and employer
• Early stage of career, endured 15 months of stress