Keith Flynn
Allegation / charges
In the matter of Keith Flynn, practising as Keith Flynn & Company, 414 The Capel Building, Mary’s Street, Dublin 7, and in the matter of the Solicitors Acts 1954-2015 [2017/DT46 and High Court record 2018 no 99 SA] Law Society of Ireland (applicant) Keith Flynn (respondent solicitor) On 12 July 2018, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found the respondent solicitor guilty of misconduct in his practice as a solicitor in that he: 1) Improperly and/or dishonestly caused or allowed a minimum deficit of in or around €40,302.70 on the client account as at 16 November 2016, 2) Ceased practice on or around 21 November 2016 with a deficit on the client account in respect of a client matter of up to €80,000, 3) Failed to notify the client the subject of the deficit at (2) above of the deficit in a timely manner or at all and, further, that they were ceasing practice without rectifying a deficit in his funds, 4) Failed over an ongoing period of time, in 2015 and 2016, to maintain proper books of account, in breach of regulation 13 and, in particular, failed to maintain books of account that showed the true financial position in relation to transactions with clients’ moneys and with other moneys transacted through the client account, in breach of regulation 13(2)(a), 5) On or around 17 October 2016, improperly and/or dishonestly caused or allowed two transfers of clients’ moneys in the amounts of €10,085 and €16,370 respectively to reduce a deficit on the client account, which moneys were not properly available to reduce the deficit, in breach of regulation 10, 6) Improperly and/or dishonestly caused or allowed the transfer of €29,000 of clients’ funds to the office account, by way of transfers of €25,000 and €4,000 on 26 October 2016 and 15 November 2016 respectively, in breach of regulation 7, 7) Failed to complete stamping in a purchase matter in a timely manner or at all, 8) Caused or allowed fees of €1,150 to be transferred to the office account on 23 August 2016 before receipt of funds on 29 August 2016, creating a debit balance of €1,150, in breach of regulation 7(2)(a), 9) Ceased practice on or around 21 November 2016 without having made all appropriate arrangements for the wind-up of the practice, thereby showing disregard for the clients of the practice, 10) Failed to have any or any adequate regard for the safekeeping of client funds. The tribunal ordered that the matter should go forward to the High Court and, on 22 October 2018, the High Court ordered that: 1) The name of the respondent solicitor be struck from the Roll of Solicitors, 2) The respondent solicitor pay the applicant’s measured costs.
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found Keith Flynn guilty of misconduct on ten grounds, including improperly and dishonestly causing a client account deficit of ~€40,302.70, ceasing practice with a deficit of up to €80,000, improper transfers of client funds, failure to maintain proper books of account, and failure to safeguard client funds. The matter was sent to the High Court, which on 22 October 2018 ordered his name struck from the Roll of Solicitors and payment of the Law Society's measured costs.
Duties found breached:
- Handle inadvertently received material
- No improper use of client money
- Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
- Orderly wind-down and contingency cover
⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["extracted_from_register_summary"]
Duties engaged
Documents
No documents recorded.
Source: https://www.lawsociety.ie/Public/disciplinarysearch/