The Case of the Vanishing Counsel
In re: Representation, Retraction & the 32-Minute Retreat
Filed: 14 August 2025
Reference: SWANK-LD/CG-2025/0814
Filename: 2025-08-14_SWANK_Addendum_WithdrawalOnEveOfIRO_ClaireGardner.pdf
Summary: On the eve of a statutory IRO meeting, a solicitor accepted instructions, received explicit written terms requiring robust action against the local authority, and withdrew 32 minutes later.
I. What Happened
On 14 August 2025, mere hours before a 15 August Independent Reviewing Officer meeting concerning four U.S.–U.K. citizen children, Hanne & Co Solicitors — acting through Ms. Claire Gardner — performed a feat of procedural vanishing rarely seen outside conjuring circles.
The morning began with polite urgency: my Legal Division requested a video meeting, forwarded the IRO invitation, and confirmed the need for her attendance. Ms. Gardner accepted, a Teams link was issued, and the scene was set for a 13:30 consultation.
At 12:48, we sent a document titled Confirmation of Representation Terms & Immediate Instruction — the sort of finely-wrought instruction any conscientious solicitor would frame, not flee from. It stipulated: hold the local authority fully accountable; reject systemic procedural decay; act decisively.
By 13:20 — a mere 32 minutes later and 10 minutes before the agreed meeting — Ms. Gardner declared herself unavailable due to a “family emergency” and that her department had “no capacity.” The withdrawal was instant, total, and impeccably timed to avoid any actual representation before the IRO.
II. What the Complaint Establishes
That Ms. Gardner’s withdrawal occurred immediately after receipt of instructions to pursue accountability against the local authority.
That such timing is, at minimum, suspicious; at maximum, indicative of systemic conflicts in safeguarding-related representation.
That the withdrawal deprived the client of representation in the final hours before a statutory review.
III. Why SWANK Logged It
Because this is not merely about one solicitor’s sudden loss of capacity — it is about the hollowing-out of representation itself. When legal professionals exit stage left the moment “accountability” is uttered, they do not merely leave the client exposed; they leave the system rotting from within.
IV. Violations
SRA Principles: Failure to act in the client’s best interests; undermining public trust.
Code of Conduct for Solicitors: Withdrawal without reasonable notice or safeguarding of client position.
Common Sense & Common Decency: Abrupt abandonment in the shadow of an urgent statutory hearing.
V. SWANK’s Position
We find the choreography of this withdrawal — its timing, its proximity to explicit anti-LA instructions, its occurrence on the eve of a statutory meeting — to be beyond professional discourtesy. It is evidence. Evidence that when robust advocacy threatens to inconvenience institutional comfort, the machinery of representation too often grinds to a halt.
We will ensure that this matter is placed before the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Family Court, the Independent Reviewing Officer, and every relevant oversight body until it is recorded for what it is: a procedural betrayal, timed to perfection.
Filed by:
✒️ Polly Chromatic
Founder & Director, SWANK London Ltd
On behalf of the SWANK Legal Division
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