Tribunal exposes elaborate deception spanning months solicitor struck off, ordered to pay £16,927 costs
A solicitor has been struck off the Roll of Solicitors after fabricating backdated correspondence and manufacturing a false email chain in a deliberate attempt to conceal his failure to meet critical appeal deadlines on behalf of two clients pursuing a claim against Royal Bank of Scotland.
William Peter Dooley, a Senior Associate at Ellis Jones Solicitors LLP, was admitted to the profession in October 2015 and had worked in the firm’s Banking and Finance Litigation department since May 2019. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard his case on 4 June 2026, with judgment delivered on 16 June 2026.
The clients, two siblings identified only as Client A and Client B, had instructed the firm in connection with complaints against RBS’s Global Restructuring Group. After their consequential loss claims were rejected in June 2021, Dooley was instructed to file appeals with an Independent Third Party. The deadlines were 19 and 20 August 2021 respectively. He missed both.
Rather than disclose the failure, Dooley on or around 27 August 2021 created a letter falsely dated 13 August 2021, purporting to apply for an extension of time. Crucially, he deliberately included an incorrect email address for the recipient, ‘apeals@itp.org.uk’ rather than ‘appeals@itp.org.uk’, designed to make it appear the correspondence had simply gone astray. He compounded this by constructing fabricated emails dated 24 and 25 August 2021, created by emailing himself and manually altering the recipient details and timestamps. He sent this manufactured chain to Person A and Client B on 27 August 2021.
When the deception unravelled in early 2022, after clients contacted the ITP directly and confirmed no appeal had ever been received; Dooley told his supervising partner a typographical error in the email address was responsible, and falsely attributed that error to his secretary. His secretary had no involvement whatsoever.
Dooley admitted all allegations, including dishonesty. The Tribunal found his conduct pre-meditated, repeated, and directed against clients, colleagues, and a third party. No exceptional circumstances existed to warrant any lesser sanction.
The Tribunal ordered Dooley struck off the Roll and initially queried the agreed costs figure of £19,500, noting the SRA’s decision to instruct external solicitors, Blake Morgan LLP, under a commercial arrangement carrying a minimum fee of £24,400 plus VAT had inflated expenses unnecessarily. Costs were ultimately fixed at £16,927.50.