Shaun Sloyan authorised early payments to a developer without key checks in place
A senior paralegal at DWF’s Manchester office has been formally rebuked by the SRA after he requested payments totalling over £1.85 million to a property developer before conditions were met, in what regulators called a breach of contract and professional trust.
Shaun Sloyan, who worked on the plot sales team, made payment requests between December 2019 and November 2020, bypassing contractual safeguards that required supervisor’s certificates and deposit warranty insurance to be in place first.
The error left the firm’s client account short by a total of £2.6 million, and more than 40 homebuyers were left with deep concerns when construction hadn’t even begun. The development site remained bare land.
Earlier this year, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) fined supervising partner Mark Shepherd £14,000, ruling he had authorised the payments without personally checking if the contractual preconditions were met.
Sloyan, who had worked for six years in DWF’s plot sales team, said he believed Shepherd’s sign-off was confirmation that everything was in order. The SRA accepted that he didn’t realise Shepherd wasn’t checking.
Embed from Getty ImagesBut the SRA concluded that Sloyan had simply copied processes from previous developments without reviewing the contract for the current project. This led to the premature release of £1.85 million without certificates and £747,000 without insurance.
In one instance, a solicitor representing a buyer queried the missing certificate. Sloyan replied that the certificate would follow “nearer to practical completion” and “should not hold up exchange” — a stance directly at odds with the terms of the contract.
Eventually, Sloyan himself noticed that the site had not progressed at all, and escalated the issue internally. But by then, the developer had gone into administration, and DWF was forced to repay affected buyers through its professional indemnity insurance.
DWF self-reported the situation to the SRA in March 2021 and has since exited plot sale work altogether. An internal investigation revealed no formal oversight of the plot sales team, nor any protocol requiring escalation to senior lawyers.
The SRA said Sloyan’s conduct caused anxiety and distress for clients and had potential to undermine public confidence in the legal profession. However, his previously clean record, lack of intent, and reliance on senior authorisation were all considered in mitigation.
Sloyan received a written rebuke and was ordered to pay £600 in costs.