By Lucy Caulkett-
A solicitor who backdated a legal document and sent it to opposing lawyers in an attempt to make it appear that it had been prepared and posted months earlier has been struck off the roll. Syed Sibtain, who qualified as a solicitor in April 2016, was removed from the profession following disciplinary proceedings before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT). He was also ordered to pay £5,000 in costs. The tribunal heard that Sibtain sent an email to opposing solicitors in October 2023 purporting to contain a copy of an acknowledgement of service letter dated July 2023. However, the opposing solicitors examined the document’s properties and found that it had been created in October, rather than several months earlier. They subsequently raised the discrepancy with Sibtain’s then firm, Midlands-based Thursfields, which has since been acquired by Knights.
Mr Sibtain, who qualified in 2016, had been employed by former West Midlands law firm Thursfields at the time of the misconduct. Thursfields was bought by listed law firm Knights in 2024. More recently, he worked as a consultant at Setfords
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Sibtain initially sought to explain away the discrepancy during an internal investigation, suggesting that problems with his laptop might have affected the document’s metadata. He said the letter had in fact been created in July but had been saved only on his desktop rather than on the firm’s database. According to his initial account, he had reopened the document in October, which he believed could explain why the electronic properties showed an October creation date. That explanation later changed when Sibtain was unable to locate an electronic copy of the letter he had claimed to have sent in July. He then acknowledged that he had recreated the document based on what he believed the original letter had contained and sent the recreated version to the opposing firm.
Crucially, he had not told his employer that the original document could not be found or that the version being supplied was a recreation. The subsequent investigation ultimately led Sibtain to admit to the Solicitors Regulation Authority that he had deliberately backdated the letter and attempted to mislead his employer. A partner at Thursfields was later told that Mr Sibtain “may have falsely claimed to have sent an acknowledgment of service in court proceedings”.
He sent them an email “which purported to contain a copy of an original acknowledgment of service letter dated 24 July 2023”. MFG said the document properties showed it had in fact been created immediately after the call. The HR director of Thursfields launched an investigation. Mr Sibtain initially suggested that the “discrepancy” could have been caused by issues he had been having with his laptop.
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But the firm’s IT director said the metadata showed the document was indeed created on 3 October and he could find no trace of an email on 24 July.
Mr Sibtain later stated that he created the document on 24 July and saved it on his desktop only, and not the firm database due to the laptop issue; he said he opened it on 3 October to check the document, which was how he believed the metadata could have shown that as the creating date. He then changed his account, saying he could not locate an electronic copy of the 24 July letter and so sent a “recreated version of what he believed he had sent them, which was purely for their records”. Mr Sibtain then emailed the HR director what he claimed was the original letter, saying he had initially deleted it and tried to restore it.
The firm’s IT director discovered that in fact Mr Sibtain had that day overwritten an unrelated document created on 25 July to match the one sent to MFG. In a meeting later that day with the HR director, he maintained that the letter had been created in July. Mr Sibtain later told the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) that he created the second letter and misled his employer “because he was afraid he would lose his job”.
The circumstances surrounding the misconduct were set out before the SDT, where it was heard that Sibtain had been struggling to meet billing targets and became concerned about the consequences of admitting that he had failed to send the letter when he should have done. In mitigation that was not agreed with the regulator, Sibtain said he had feared losing his job at a particularly difficult time, with his wife due to give birth to their fourth child two months later. The agreed outcome between Sibtain and the SRA was that he should be struck off. The tribunal subsequently ordered his removal from the roll of solicitors, bringing his professional career to an end.
While Sibtain’s personal circumstances and concerns about his employment were placed before the tribunal in mitigation, the deliberate backdating of a legal document and the subsequent attempt to mislead his employer were sufficiently serious to warrant the profession’s most severe sanction. Sibtain, who turns 41 this month, is therefore no longer entitled to practise as a solicitor. He must also pay £5,000 towards the costs of the disciplinary proceedings. In the past seven years, there were 399 strike-offs, averaging approximately57 per year. there were around 171,700 practising solicitors in England and Wales in October 2024
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