Biggart Baillie LLP

Crooked Lawyers based in Edinburgh

In 2002/2003 the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman (SLSO) found that the Law Society had twice failed to "understand or investigate" allegations of collusion and conflict of interest against the then law society president’s firm, Biggart Baillie LLP, and two partners. The SLSO findings on the Law Society’s investigation and re-investigation substantiates this website's contention that the Law Society’s failure in its statutory duty to investigate complaints is, without doubt, premeditated. The failures in question involved such extreme departures from established legal principles – coupled with a total disregard of clear-cut evidence of professional misconduct. Any possibility that those failures can be attributed to investigative negligence on the part of those distinguished Law Society legal minds, must surely be discounted!

SLSO Findings on the Law Society 1st attempt to 'investigate':

• "I fail to see why 2.5 hours work took 15 weeks, and consider there was avoidable delay."
• "Standard Law Society procedure is to intimate conduct complaints to the individual solicitor concerned and to give that solicitor the opportunity to comment - Mr M Lloyd was right."
• "I am concerned that these inconsistencies were not picked up during the course of the investigation" - [conflicting statements made by Biggart Baillie Client Relations Partner regarding the identities of solicitors involved]
• "I note however that she only sent a copy to the Client Relations Partner of Messrs Biggart Baillie and not to Mr Lloyd" [secret Law Society Q.C. opinion on ownership of papers that destroyed Biggart Baillie’s so-called defence]
• "I am therefore NOT Satisfied that Mr Lloyd's complaints about conflict of interest and collusion have been understood or investigated"
• "I am NOT satisfied that this complaint was investigated thoroughly or fairly" – [regarding the strange disappearance of the client's file]
• "I recommend that the Law Society clarifies which solicitors were involved and intimates the complaints to them in accordance with normal Law Society procedure."
• "I recommend that both complaints should be investigated according to correct procedures, with notifications sent to the appropriate solicitors."
• "Mr Lloyd was caused great frustration and inconvenience because he thought that the Law Society failed, and continued to fail, to understand the basis for his complaints and failed to take his evidence into account. I agree with Mr Lloyd and consider that there should have been no need for him to keep repeating his evidence. I recommend that the Law Society pay Mr Lloyd the sum of £300 compensation for their failure to deal with his complaints effectively."

The Law Society accept the recommendations of the SLSO and agreed to re-investigate Biggart Baillie and partners. Philip Yelland, Director of Regulation, took personal charge of the re-investigation. Suspicions were then raised that a second Law Society whitewash was about to take place....

SLSO Findings on the Law Society Re-investigation:

And sure enough, those suspicions proved to be well founded, as the Law Society once again cleared both partners of professional misconduct. A second complaint was then lodged with the SLSO. Her opinion on the re-investigation contained the following damning findings

• "I AM SERIOUSLY CONCERNED to note that the Law Society did not formally intimate the conduct complaints to Mr Kidd or Mr McFarlane. The Law Society normally write to solicitors setting out the Law Society's statutory powers - it did not do that in this case, despite my criticisms in the earlier Opinion." [In other words, Philip Yelland’s procedural failings gifted the two partners a near-perfect defence had they been prosecuted at the SSDT]

• "The Law Society did not uphold the conduct complaint because of a commonly held belief which the Reporter said was not correct. It is widely accepted that ignorance of the law is no excuse and it is somewhat surprising that this does not extend to the Law Society in determining complaints. In his complaint to me Mr Lloyd said that he thought that this was a matter which could affect clients in the future and I agree with him. I am NOT satisfied that the Law Society has dealt appropriately with the erroneously held belief."

• "I AM CONCERNED that a faulty understanding of the legal position has once again been used to exonerate the solicitors in terms of the conduct complaint. I am not satisfied that the Director of the Professional Practice Department’s note that surely there must have been a conflict of interest was taken into account."

Biggart Baillie, as a firm, admitted providing an inadequate professional service (IPS) on 3 counts:

• Acting in a conflict of interest
• Issuing two versions of the opinion when they shouldn’t have
• Mislaying the client’s file

Biggart Baillie paid some compensation and, perhaps more significantly, refunded my father his fees for the opinion. They also returned his file, which miraculously reappeared mid-investigation.

One could be forgiven for assuming that the Law Society’s “faulty understanding of the legal position” must surely have involved a highly complex and extraordinary matter of law. It didn’t. In fact, the Law Society’s “ignorance of the law” related to an age-old legal principle that’s fully understood by every single lawyer in the country, which is this: solicitors act as agents for their clients. Rocket science it certainly isn’t, yet when the Law Society’s top legal brains sat on their numerous complaints committees and council sittings they purposefully chose to ignore the law of agency and fiduciary basis for all solicitor/client relationships, in order to exonerate solicitors who worked for the president’s firm.

The Law Society ‘investigations’ took over 4 YEARS despite the legal and factual background being entirely straightforward.

Alan McFarlane

In the Biggart Baillie scandal, Alan McFarlane was the partner who involved himself and his firm in a conflict of interest situation by agreeing to act for both HJ Lloyd and Campbell Riddell. He then compounded matters by agreeing to Campbell Riddell's request to manufacture a doctored version of the conveyancing opinion, thereby depriving HJ Lloyd of his firm's opinion that Campbell Riddell may have been to blame. Click Here to read Sheriff Principal Bowen's comments.

He didn't bargain on Campbell Riddell failing to destroy the 1st version of the opinion!

When asked for an explanation, Alan McFarlane claimed to have no recollection about events!

David Kidd

David Kidd 'lost' the client's file which contained documentary evidence incriminating his Biggart Baillie colleague, Alan McFarlane (see above), in a scheme to defraud a client. When challenged about this fraud, Kidd claimed he was “as mystified as anyone” as to how it came about his firm had issued a doctored 2nd version of the client's conveyancing opinion. However, two years later, in a meeting with Alan McFarlane, his memory suddenly returned! He told McFarlane he remembered exactly "how it came about" that his firm came to issue the 2nd version.

REFERENCES

Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman opinion LSO/00211/01

Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman opinion LSO/405/02

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