Andrew Lee (solicitor)

Introduction

Andrew Lee is a solicitor, admitted in November 2011, who has been struck off the roll after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found he acted dishonestly by continuing to practise for around a year after his firm’s professional indemnity insurance expired. Lee was the sole director, manager and role-holder of Prometheus Law, a north-west London firm that was supposed to close in June 2022 after it was unable to renew its insurance; instead, the tribunal found, he went on acting for clients on private legal work until the Solicitors Regulation Authority intervened into the firm in July 2023. He was also found to have given misleading information to the SRA about the nature of his relationship with one client, and to have sent a client standard terms of business stating the firm had insurance when no such cover existed. He was ordered to pay £45,121 in costs. He is not the same person as the former footballer Andrew-Lee Wiltshire who also appears on this site.

Background Information

Prometheus Law was Lee’s own firm, built over many years, with Lee as its sole director, manager and role-holder. The firm was unable to renew its professional indemnity insurance, and under the regulatory regime that followed it was required to cease practice when the cessation period expired in June 2022. Lee did not close it. The tribunal later accepted that he had been trying to save a business he had built, but held that this did not alter the regulatory position or answer the allegation of dishonesty.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Dishonesty findings by a disciplinary tribunal. The account below comes from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s ruling as reported by the Law Society Gazette. Strike-off is a regulatory sanction on the civil standard; Lee accepted his conduct was wrong but contested the dishonesty characterisation in part, and the tribunal rejected that defence.

The tribunal set out three facts it said Lee knew: “the firm had no qualifying insurance, the cessation period had expired, and the firm was required to cease practice. He nevertheless continued to accept instructions and to do legal work. Putting his head in the sand did not negate that knowledge.” The ruling continued that Lee “described some of the people he acted for as friends and relied on blurred personal and professional boundaries”, but that this “did not change the character of the communications, which were in substance, and often in form, correspondence between solicitor and client”.

Lee’s defence was that he had been “obsessed” with trying to preserve or revive the firm’s previous insurance arrangements and believed until the SRA’s intervention that there was some chance of a solution. He accepted he had sent a client standard terms of business stating the firm had insurance in place when none existed, but attributed it to using an outdated template, and denied there had been a “universal strategy of concealment”, saying one client relationship was a friendship with “increasingly professional characteristics”. The tribunal rejected the explanations as answers to the dishonesty finding.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The tribunal’s conclusion was published in the ruling: Lee knew the relevant facts, and “his unwillingness to confront the implications of those facts did not prevent him from knowing them”. He was struck off the roll and ordered to pay £45,121 in costs. The SRA’s intervention into Prometheus Law in July 2023 had already ended the firm’s ability to operate before the tribunal ruling arrived.

Lee had accepted before the tribunal that his conduct was wrong and that some legal work, instructions and payments occurred after the insurance cover ended. The dispute at the hearing was over characterisation rather than facts, and the tribunal’s findings resolved it against him: the strike-off was for dishonesty, the most serious tier of regulatory finding in the profession.

Current Status

Lee was struck off the roll of solicitors in the ruling reported on 13 October 2026, with £45,121 in costs ordered against him. Strike-off removes his ability to practise as a solicitor in England and Wales, and — as with all dishonesty strike-offs — any future application for restoration to the roll faces a tribunal guidance presumption that applications within six years are premature absent exceptional circumstances.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The loss of the firm, the SRA intervention, a strike-off for dishonesty and a five-figure costs order together end Lee’s legal career in the jurisdiction, and the published ruling means the finding follows him into any regulated profession he might approach. The case has been cited in coverage of the SRA’s insurance cessation rules as an example of the tribunal taking a hard line on sole practitioners who keep practising uninsured.

Sources

• Law Society Gazette, “Solicitor who practised for a year without insurance struck off,” 13 October 2026 — source