Shawcoss admitted accounting breaches; fined £ 5,000 and ordered to pay £ 10,000 in costs
A solicitor has been fined and ordered to pay heavy costs after a tribunal found serious failings in her handling of client accounts, including a £41,055.95 shortfall that damaged confidence in the profession.
Danielle Louise Shawcross, admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in 2013, was the sole director and owner of DLS Legal Services Limited. At the time, she also carried the compliance roles of COLP, COFA, and MLRO. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) heard her case on 24 October 2022, dealing with the matter on the papers following an agreed outcome with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
The SRA’s investigation began after a qualified accountant’s report, covering October 2016 to May 2017, flagged material breaches and significant weaknesses in financial controls at her firm. By September 2018, the regulator confirmed a shortfall exceeding £41,000 in the client account.
Shawcoss admitted to multiple breaches of the Solicitors Accounts Rules 2011. She accepted that she had permitted the client account shortfall to arise, failed to rectify it promptly, and failed to maintain proper accounting records. Investigators also found she had made incorrect transfers between office and client accounts totalling £33,848.34, wrongly held £3,044 of client money in her office account, and authorised incorrect payments from client funds totalling £4,163.61.
Embed from Getty ImagesOn top of that, the tribunal heard that she had failed to carry out adequate reconciliations of the client account for nearly two years. Those failures breached rules 1.2, 29.12, and 29.14 of the Accounts Rules, along with Principles 6 and 10 of the 2011 SRA Principles.
Although no dishonesty or lack of integrity was alleged, the SDT stressed that the misconduct harmed the reputation of the legal profession. While no clients were left out of pocket, the scale of the breaches was significant.
The panel, chaired by Mr A Ghosh with Mr M N Millin and Mr P Hurley, considered both culpability and harm. They found Shawcross bore full responsibility as a sole practitioner and compliance officer but acknowledged that she had cooperated with the SRA, admitted the allegations, and taken steps to remedy the problems. Those measures included hiring external accountants to rebuild the firm’s books and completing training to address gaps in her knowledge.
The tribunal concluded that no order or reprimand would be enough to reflect the seriousness of the misconduct. It assessed the failings as “moderately serious” and imposed a fine of £5,000, sitting in the middle of the Level 2 indicative fine band.
Costs were also fixed at £10,000, bringing Shawcross’s total financial penalty to £15,000. The SDT noted her insight into the causes of the problems and accepted that she had taken action to avoid any repeat. It further recorded that she had no previous disciplinary history.
In its written judgment dated 21 November 2022, the tribunal emphasised that while clients suffered no direct loss, systemic financial control failures by a solicitor, particularly one holding multiple compliance roles, undermine public trust in the profession. Shawcross remains a practising solicitor but now carries the weight of a disciplinary record and a significant financial sanction.
The ruling stands as a reminder that client money protections are among the strictest obligations in legal practice, and failures in accounting systems will attract substantial penalties, even where dishonesty is not alleged.