Abhishek Kumar

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

Abhishek Kumar, a Registered Foreign Lawyer, faced two allegations. Allegation 1 concerned his 2024 conviction for knowingly employing an adult disqualified from work by immigration status, contrary to s.21 Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (sentenced to a 12-month Community Order with 150 hours unpaid work). Allegation 2, brought under Rule 14, concerned his filing of a Rule 12 Answer and an email to the SRA containing fabricated/incorrect/misleading legal citations and quotations generated by AI, repeated even after being warned. Both allegations were proved (Paragraph 2.4 proved in part). Dishonesty was expressly NOT alleged; the Tribunal stressed this, though it found breaches of integrity (Principle 5). The Tribunal found culpability and harm very high for both allegations and, finding no exceptional circumstances, ordered the Respondent to be struck off the Register of Foreign Lawyers. This was the first Tribunal case litigating a lawyer's misuse of AI/large language models. As the Respondent was impecunious, no costs were sought or ordered.

Duties found breached:

• Not mislead the court
• Integrity
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank

Aggravating factors:

• Abuse of position of authority and exploitation of a vulnerable person paid cash in hand
• Commission of a criminal offence
• Planned conduct and breach of position of trust
• Repeated the AI-generated citation errors after being warned
• Persistent lack of insight and shifting blame to outside causes
• Misled the regulator in formal communications

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary findings
• Was acting as a litigant in person, not for a client, in relation to Allegation 2
• Expressed remorse and apologised
• Claimed mental health difficulties, bereavement and financial hardship (though not accepted as sufficient mitigation)
• Completed his criminal sentence