NEWS – “without comment”
Family solicitor who hired private investigator fined £17,500
By Bianca Castro
11 May 2026
A Family law solicitor who hired a private investigator to find out the address of a litigant in person which he then shared with his client has been fined £17,500.
Sole practitioner Clive Graham Wood, admitted in 1982, was alleged to have 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 them and had no legal duty to do so.
He was also alleged to have obtained Person M’s contact details by instructing a private investigator. He then disclosed those details to his client when he knew or ought to have known Person M would not have consented to her details being obtained in such a way, and, under the Family Procedure Rules, Person M was entitled to withhold her contact details until directed to disclose them by a court order.
Wood denied both allegations in their entirety.
Representing himself during the day-and-a-half substantive hearing at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, Wood confirmed in cross examination he had instructed a tracing agent ‘at the specific instructions of my client’.
The three-person panel found both allegations proved but dismissed part of the second allegation that in obtaining Person M’s contact details by hiring a private investigator he had prevented the court from being able to properly determine whether such disclosure should be made.
Full Article:
NOTES FOR CONSIDERATION:
The article still does not appear to substantiate the proposition that the solicitor’s misconduct consisted simply of “hiring” a private investigator.
The publicly accessible wording remains materially narrower than the headline.
The operative factual allegation reported is – The solicitor “repeatedly asked a litigant in person for her contact details and passed them to his client.”
That is a very different formulation from:
The solicitor unlawfully hired a private investigator”; or
The tribunal held that instructing an investigator was itself misconduct.”
From the material currently available, the article appears to do three things rhetorically:
- identify a colourful surrounding fact (“private investigator”)
- elevate it into the headline
- compress the actual misconduct findings into a shorthand narrative.
Legally and evidentially, those are not the same thing.
The article does not appear to provide:
The tribunal’s pleaded allegations.
The exact SDT findings.
Any quotation from the judgment stating that “hiring an investigator” was the offending act.
Instead, the factual chain described publicly appears to be something closer to:
The solicitor obtained/passed on personal contact details
The tribunal found professional misconduct connected to that conduct
The journalist summarised the episode as “solicitor who hired private investigator”.
That is an inferential journalistic framing, not necessarily the legal gravamen of the SDT decision.
There is also an important professional-regulatory distinction here.
Hiring a private investigator is not inherently improper in England and Wales.
Solicitors and litigants can lawfully instruct private investigators.
WAPI are writing to the Law Gazette seeking a clarification on the inclusion of the PI in this article.
Posted by: Ian (D. Withers)
www.WAPI.org
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