Clive Graham Wood

Introduction

Clive Graham Wood is a solicitor, admitted in 1982, who ran his own firm, CGW Law, as a sole practitioner. In July 2022, while acting in family proceedings, he repeatedly pressed the opposing party in the case — a litigant in person identified in the proceedings as Person M — for her contact details after she had made clear she did not want to give them, and then obtained those details through a private investigator and passed them to his own client. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal fined him £17,500 and ordered him to pay £15,000 in costs after finding the conduct breached the principles protecting parties to family proceedings.

Background Information

Wood acted for a client identified as Person B in family proceedings in which Person M was the opposing party, representing herself without a lawyer. The Family Procedure Rules in force in such proceedings direct that a party is entitled to withhold her contact details until a court order directs their disclosure — a protection designed for cases where issues of safeguarding and risk of domestic abuse frequently arise. Wood’s conduct was assessed against the SRA Principles 2019 and paragraph 1.2 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors, RELs and RFLs.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Civil regulatory finding, not a criminal verdict. The account below comes from the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal’s decision as summarised by the Law Society Gazette. The fine is a civil regulatory sanction; the findings were made on the civil standard in professional proceedings.

The tribunal found that during July 2022 Wood attempted to take unfair advantage of Person M’s position as a litigant in person by repeatedly asking her for her contact details when he knew or ought to have known that she did not want to provide the information, that she had no legal duty to provide it, and that he did not need it to progress his client’s matter. In the same month, the tribunal found, he obtained her contact details by means of a private investigator and disclosed them to his client, knowing or ought to have known that obtaining them was not necessary, that Person M would not have consented to her details being obtained by such means, and that the Family Procedure Rules entitled her to withhold them until a court ordered otherwise.

The tribunal said Wood had demonstrated an unnecessarily partisan approach which had at times compromised his professional objectivity. It accepted that he had been motivated by what he perceived to be the interests of his client and by a mistaken belief that he was entitled to take the steps he did, but held that this did not materially reduce the seriousness of the misconduct. The potential for harm, it found, was clear: the procedural safeguards of the family rules exist to protect parties and children in proceedings where safeguarding and domestic-abuse risks frequently arise, and Wood had circumvented those safeguards and disclosed confidential contact information outside the court process.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The tribunal concluded that a financial penalty was the appropriate sanction, and that a fine of £17,500 was commensurate with and proportionate to the seriousness of the misconduct. It ordered Wood to pay costs of £15,000. The decision fell well short of the profession’s removal tier: the tribunal did not suspend him or strike him off, and its sanction was the fine and costs alone. The reported decision does not record any public statement from Wood in response to the findings.

Current Status

Wood remains a solicitor, subject to the fine and the £15,000 costs order made when the tribunal announced its decision at the hearing on 7 and 8 May 2026, with reasons published on 5 June 2026. No suspension, conditions or restriction were imposed in the reported decision.

Impact on Their Career/Life

For a solicitor of more than forty years’ standing, the published finding — that he used a private investigator to reach a self-representing opponent who had refused to give her details, in family proceedings carrying domestic-abuse safeguards — attaches a serious professional-conduct record to the closing phase of his career. The case also stands as authority within the profession that the tribunal treats the privacy protections of the Family Procedure Rules as safeguards a solicitor may not route around, whatever his view of his client’s interests.

Sources

• Law Society Gazette, “SDT decisions: 25 September 2026” (respondent Clive Graham Wood), 25 September 2026 — source