Nicholas Giles Collins

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

Nicholas Giles Collins, an experienced solicitor at Russell Jones & Walker and later Slater & Gordon, misled his client EH about the progress of her personal injury claim against the Inland Revenue/HMRC over a 17-year period (2004-2021). He made hundreds of false and misleading statements (258 schedule entries) claiming he had instructed barristers, obtained an arbitration award of £360,136.10, secured court judgments, instructed bailiffs and obtained a third-party debt order, when in fact he never advanced the claim, never instructed counsel, and the case never went to court. He created false documents including court hearing notes, a third-party debt order application and complaint letters to support the deception. The Tribunal, dealing with the matter on the papers via an Agreed Outcome, found his admitted conduct dishonest under Ivey v Genting. The claim is now likely statute-barred, causing significant harm. He was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £6,316.20.

Duties found breached:

• Honesty
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No conflict between current clients
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues

Aggravating factors:

• Repeated dishonest conduct over approximately 16 years
• Misconduct was deliberate, calculated and planned
• Created false documents to support false statements
• Significant breach of trust placed in him by client
• Knew or ought to have known conduct breached obligations to protect public and reputation of profession
• Experienced solicitor with ~20 years PQE

Mitigating factors:

• Full co-operation with SRA investigation and extensive admissions during S&G investigation
• Previously unblemished/clean disciplinary record over 20 year career