Richard Charles Boyd

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

Richard Charles Boyd, a partner/sole practitioner at North Yorkshire Law, was found to have improperly transferred up to £37,677.60 from client account to office account across seven probate files on 27 February 2020 to address the firm's financial difficulties, without notifying clients. He dishonestly told an executor client this was 'perfectly normal' practice. After his partnership dissolved and the firm lost SRA authorisation, he failed to disclose to PII insurers that the SRA had told him he was not authorised, and made three untruthful/misleading statements to insurers about his authorisation status. The Tribunal made express findings of dishonesty (applying Ivey) on all four allegations and struck him off the Roll. Allegation 2 (recklessness as aggravating feature) was dismissed. Costs were assessed at £32,500 but no order for costs was made due to his bankruptcy and lack of means.

Duties found breached:

• Act in the client's best interests
• Advise objectively, not a mere conduit
• Honesty
• Integrity
• No conflict between current clients
• Not mislead third parties or opponents
• Not misrepresent regulated status
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct was deliberate, calculated and repeated
• Misleading of insurers continued over many months
• Targeting of vulnerable probate estate funds
• Concealment from estate representatives and insurers throughout
• Aware he was in material breach in all aspects
• Browbeating Mrs Mainprize into agreeing to a transfer already made on a false pretext and then lying about usual practice
• High culpability; abuse of position of trust; considerable experience

Mitigating factors:

• Unblemished regulatory history over a long career
• Monies eventually returned to client account (no client lost money)
• Co-operated with the SRA investigation and made some admissions
• Glowing character references
• Age (71) and personal/professional consequences already suffered