A barrister who suggested that a former colleague should be placed in a “mental asylum” has been disbarred.
Mariam El-Sobky, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn Court, also made illicit recordings of Family Court hearings on at least three occasions in July and August 2021.
Ms El-Sobky taped the hearings without seeking consent from the judge, the Bar Standards Board found.
She then sent the illicit recordings to her employees over WhatsApp so that they could create transcripts of the hearings, the board found.
Disciplinary proceedings also found that Ms El-Sobky, when instructed by the mother in family court proceedings, had missed a key meeting between lawyers and sent an unqualified person in her place.
In December 2021, the barrister made fun of a former employee’s mental health in a group WhatsApp chat.
She referred to her “a very sick young lady” and wrote: “Best place for you I think is a mental asylum. No access to internet or Wi-Fi and restraints lol.”
Ms El-Sobky, who was called to the Bar in England and Wales in 2001, was found guilty of multiple breaches of professional standards after a disciplinary tribunal hearing.
The panel found that she had made dishonest or misleading statements to a court, acted without honesty and integrity, and misled a court.
She was also found to have “failed to keep the affairs of her client confidential” in March 2021 by sending legal papers to the personal email address of an employee, without asking them to sign a confidentiality agreement.
In February 2023, an employment tribunal found that Ms El-Sobky’s WhatsApp comments about the former employee’s mental health amounted to harassment.
The lawyers’ disciplinary tribunal also found that she “harassed a former employee by making fun of confidential mental health issues”.
She has now been disbarred, with a suspension from practice for nine months.
An order has also been put in place that she can only return to her legal work with “satisfactory proof of capacity to practise by a Bar Standards Board approved mental health professional”.
The barrister was also ordered to pay £7,226.44 in costs.
“Ms El-Sobky failed to observe her duty to the court in the administration of justice. This behaviour falls far below the standards the public rightly expect of barristers,” a Bar Standards Board spokesperson said.
“The decision to disbar reflects the seriousness of the misconduct in this case.”
