1. The second solicitor appeared to agree decisions by the Tribunal in rejecting my requests that audio recordings be made of the Hearing proper and of interviews with the Panel’s Medical Expert, were not lawful. I instructed him to propose viable options for challenging those Decisions and in fact to challenge them. He did not object.
2. The Solicitor offered me a document to sign, authorising him to act on my behalf and to request certain documents and records. I signed the Document but immediately had reservations regarding a clause authorising him to obtain unnecessary financial information (bank accounts, etc.).
3. I asked him to excise that clause (it was on a palmtop computer). He refused but did remove my signature. He said he could still obtain the documents he required without that signature. I suggested he draft a document without such a clause and send it to me by email to sign.
(i). The Solicitor's instructions were to retain a psychiatrist to carry out an independent examination of me, should no valid diagnosis be found. He said, while he had no objection to having consultations recorded, since he had "nothing to hide" (his own words), psychiatrists might not accept such an arrangement.
(ii). I suggested, in that event, I should speak to the psychiatrist and discover his concerns: we might reach an understanding. He accepted this suggestion.
(iii). The following day, I received an email from the Solicitor: he would not be representing me. As far as providing reasons for this decision, the email was so vague as to be meaningless.
4. After about a week of sending emails and telephoning, I managed to speak to the solicitor, on the telephone. He said his insurance policy would not cover him if he agreed to audio recordings of consultations, then he abruptly terminated the call.
5. I wrote to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority, asking if such a clause would be acceptable in an insurance contract for a lawyer or a law firm. The SRA said it would not.
6. I wrote to the Solicitor, informing him of the response from the SRA. I asked him to send me a copy of the part of his insurance policy containing that clause.
(i). He now claimed he had been so alarmed at my instructions, my wish to record consultations and my refusal to sign that Document, he had sought advice from the SRA and the Law Society.
(ii). He said they too had been concerned at the situation and advised him to seek, in his insurance policy, such a clause as he had claimed prevented him from representing me.
(iii). The concern of the SRA and Law Society, and his own apprehensions, were enough, he said: he made the decision not to represent me on those grounds alone, without searching for such a clause in his insurance policy or speaking to his insurer.
(iv). I later discovered, from the SRA, that the Solicitor only telephoned it regarding my case on 04 April: nearly a fortnight after he told me he would not represent me, on 24 March.