Shivani Jegarajah

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

Barrister Shivani Jegarajah admitted four charges of professional misconduct after, on 11 September 2019, sending an email to a journalist with attachments containing highly sensitive confidential documents relating to her immigration client, without consent. The tribunal accepted the attachments were sent by mistake but that doing so was reckless. Charges included failing to act with integrity (Core Duty 3), but no express finding of dishonesty was made. Assessed as moderate culpability and moderate harm. Despite serious aggravating factors including prior confidentiality-related findings, the majority imposed a fine of £10,000 rather than suspension, plus £7,758 costs (total £17,758).

Duties found breached:

• Overriding duty to the court
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Not an error of an inexperienced barrister; called in 1993, pupil supervisor and founder of own chambers
• Aggressive initial response to the BSB investigation
• Two previous disciplinary findings, one of which also involved a breach of confidentiality (2015 unauthorised access to a colleague's computer)
• High sensitivity of the information and the fact it was disclosed to a journalist

Mitigating factors:

• Sending of attachments was a mistake, not deliberate (accepted by BSB)
• Admitted the charges two days before and at the hearing
• Respondent was in a passionate, emotional and stressed state at the time
• Emotional and family difficulties faced at the time
• Genuine remorse and full acceptance of responsibility