Michael Shrimpton

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

Michael Shrimpton, a former barrister (disbarred) working as a solicitor's clerk, applied to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal to review/revoke a section 43 Order imposed by an SRA Chief Adjudicator on 16 September 2019. The Order followed his criminal convictions: a 2014 conviction for making/possessing 40 indecent images of children (Protection of Children Act 1978) and a 2014 conviction for two counts of communicating false information with intent (bomb hoax claiming a nuclear warhead in London during the Olympics), for which he was jailed 12 months. The Applicant sought to go behind his convictions with fresh expert evidence (Mr Cufley) and raised extensive jurisdictional arguments (Weare, Spackman, Shepherd, Hollington). The Tribunal, applying the review standard from Arslan and relying on Rule 15(2), rejected all his arguments, found no exceptional circumstances to go behind the convictions, upheld the express finding of dishonesty in relation to the bomb hoax offence (applying the Ivey test), and found the Chief Adjudicator's decision to make the section 43 Order was neither wrong nor unjust. The application was refused and the Applicant ordered to pay costs of £8,160. His subsequent High Court appeal was dismissed.

Duties found breached:

• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Two criminal convictions, one resulting in 12 months' imprisonment
• One offence was of a sexual nature involving indecent images of children
• Dishonesty involved in the bomb hoax offence
• Lack of insight or remorse; continued denial of guilt
• Risk to the public given the nature of his immigration work representing vulnerable adults and potentially unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors

Mitigating factors:

• The Applicant argued he had worked as a solicitor's clerk under supervision for around 3.5 years without judicial criticism (raised but not accepted as decisive)