Today the Solicitors Regulation Authority has been told it is on the hook for more than half a million pounds in legal costs to Claire Gill, after the regulator’s SLAPPs case failed against the Carter-Ruck partner who acted for the $4 billion crypto-scam OneCoin.
The legal watchdog referred Gill to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal alleging she had made an “improper threat of litigation” in a letter sent to a victim of the scam who tried to warn others. The SRA argued that Gill had “lost her moral compass” and succumbed to pressure from her client to threaten litigation that they did not intend to see through.
But in December 2025 the Tribunal threw out the SRA’s case, saying its complaint was “founded on hindsight rather than evidence of professional misconduct”, and criticised the regulator’s delay in bringing the case. The Tribunal found insufficient evidence to prove Gill had actual knowledge of the fraud, and concluded that even if she harboured suspicions about OneCoin’s wrongdoing, “absent such knowledge, the solicitor was entitled and often obliged to continue to act”.
Today’s ruling rubs salt in the SRA’s wound by ordering the regulator to pay Gill’s legal costs – which she claims are just over £1 million. This departs from the usual practice that no costs order is made when the SRA loses, not least because proceedings cannot be issued without certification by the Tribunal.
The panel said today it had “good reason” to depart from this default approach because the SRA’s case was “legally flawed and unsupported by evidence”, while the “prolonged delay” and “legal inaccuracies” caused “disproportionate prejudice” to Gill.
The exact amount the SRA will have to cough up will be determined by a costs judge at a later stage, but the Tribunal decided that costs should be awarded on a standard basis – meaning that it will be limited to what is reasonable and proportionate – and excludes a period before the SRA referred the complaint to the Tribunal. This means costs are unlikely to cover the full amount originally claimed by Carter-Ruck.
There is no doubt this ruling will have a chilling effect on the SRA’s appetite to tackle SLAPPs. This is deeply concerning given this is a new and contested area of professional ethics where the regulator’s job is to pursue cases in the public interest – which may not always mean winning them.
While today’s ruling is another significant blow to the SRA – and its third loss in early efforts to hold lawyers to account over alleged SLAPPs – it is welcome that the legal regulator has filed an appeal in this OneCoin case.
There are real questions to be asked about the Tribunal’s approach in setting such a high bar of actual knowledge of wrongdoing – effectively requiring complicity – before professional ethics kick in. This buys into a minimalist view of professional ethics which implies that as long as conduct is legal, it is ethical. But in our view, this fails to grapple with the public interest that should be the lodestar of ethical conduct in the law as a public profession.
