Malika Williams-Gregoire

Introduction

Malika Williams-Gregoire is a solicitor and the former owner and manager of Hepburns Solicitors LLP, a south London legal practice, who was fined £5,276 and ordered to pay £1,350 in costs by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in a decision dated 4 June 2026. The SRA found that while she was the firm’s manager and its compliance officer for legal practice, she caused or allowed the firm to lose its SRA authorisation on 1 November 2020 and then continue practising and carrying out reserved legal activities for clients without authorisation — a period that stretched across years until the firm’s closure and the regulator’s intervention. The decision also found failures in her duties as the firm’s finance compliance officer, including improper accounting records and unsigned client-account reconciliations.

Background Information

Williams-Gregoire owned and managed Hepburns Solicitors LLP, based at Blackwater Court on Blackwater Street in East Dulwich, London, and held both of the firm’s senior compliance roles: compliance officer for legal practice (COLP) and compliance officer for finance and administration (COFA). SRA forensic investigation reports in April 2022 and October 2023 identified a series of problems from her tenure, including a failure to maintain proper and accurate client ledgers — which produced a cash shortage on the client account — and a failure to sign reconciliations. The firm closed on 22 September 2023, and on 13 November 2023 the SRA decided to intervene into the practice to protect the interests of clients, former clients and potential clients under paragraph 32(1)(e) of Schedule 2 to the Administration of Justice Act 1985.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The claims in this section are findings of the Solicitors Regulation Authority, a regulator imposing administrative sanctions; they were not made by a criminal court, and no criminal charges were brought. The decision notice records no admission of the findings and no public defence or denial from Williams-Gregoire in the record covered here.

The SRA found that while she was manager and COLP, Williams-Gregoire caused or allowed Hepburns to lose its SRA authorisation on 1 November 2020, and thereafter to continue to practise and undertake reserved legal activities for clients when the firm was not authorised — breaching paragraph 2.1(a) and paragraph 9.1(a) of the SRA Code of Conduct for Firms 2019 and Principle 2 of the SRA Principles 2019. It further found that as manager and COFA she failed to ensure the firm maintained proper accounting records and books of account, and failed to sign client-account reconciliations, breaching rules 5.3 and 8.3 of the SRA Accounts Rules 2019, paragraph 5.2 of the Code of Conduct for Firms, and Principle 2. The unauthorised-practice finding is the more serious of the two: reserved legal activities performed by an unauthorised firm leave clients without the protections — insurance, compensation-fund cover, regulatory recourse — that authorisation exists to provide.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The SRA decided a financial penalty was an appropriate and proportionate sanction, ordering Williams-Gregoire to pay £5,276 plus £1,350 in costs. The decision was published on the regulator’s public register on 18 August 2026, where her entry now records both the fine and the underlying findings. By the date of publication she was working at The Insolvency Service, a government agency, as her listed employer — her regulatory record following her into subsequent employment as a published, searchable document. The firm she ran, meanwhile, no longer exists: its closure in September 2023 and the SRA’s intervention two months later were the endpoint of the compliance failures set out in her decision.

Current Status

Williams-Gregoire remains a solicitor on the roll with a published regulatory fine and findings against her; the SRA imposed a penalty rather than suspension or strike-off, and no referral to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal appears in the decision. The decision notice gives no indication of any appeal. The intervention into Hepburns Solicitors — the mechanism by which the SRA closed the practice, took over client files and protected client interests — concluded the operational story of the firm, while her personal regulatory record remains on the register permanently.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A finding of allowing a firm to practise without authorisation is among the most serious a firm compliance officer can carry, because it goes to the core of what authorisation means; paired with the accounts failures, it effectively forecloses Williams-Gregoire from holding the COLP or COFA roles she once held, and from owning or managing an SRA-authorised practice. Her move to The Insolvency Service, a public body, illustrates the path former regulated lawyers take into non-legal employment after regulatory sanction. The case stands as a warning example of the compliance-officer’s personal exposure: the regulator held her personally accountable for authorisation and accounts failures that occurred while she was the firm’s designated guardian of both.

Sources

• Solicitors Regulation Authority, “Malika Williams-Gregoire - 528838,” regulatory decision published 18 August 2026. source