Harejeet Kaur Judge

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

Harjeet Kaur Judge, an assistant solicitor, created a false Decree Absolute and handed it to her divorce client Ms KG, telling her she was divorced when she was not. The Tribunal found allegations 1.1-1.4 proved (admitted) and found dishonesty (allegation 1.5) proved on both objective and subjective Twinsectra tests. Despite psychiatric evidence that she suffered from PTSD triggered by bullying at her firm, the Tribunal held the PTSD did not prevent her knowing that forging the court document was wrong. No exceptional circumstances existed to avoid the ultimate sanction. She was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £12,500, not enforceable without leave of the Tribunal.

Duties found breached:

• Honesty
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Fabrication of a court document that could have caused significant harm to the client and others
• Failed to reveal or confess her misconduct to the client or the firm; it was left to be discovered by Mr Chohan
• Held herself out as a family law expert yet made numerous procedural errors
• Repeatedly asked the client about remarriage, inferred to be to check if the forgery would be discovered

Mitigating factors:

• Misconduct was of brief duration and a one-off episode
• Open and frank early admissions (except dishonesty)
• Full co-operation with the Applicant
• Suffering from PTSD at the material time supported by medical evidence
• Junior/inexperienced solicitor
• Positive testimonials and expressions of remorse and apology