Remote work: Solicitor earned more from side hustle than actual job
A solicitor who lied to his law firm about moonlighting on an online platform that allows members of the public to ask lawyers questions has been struck off.
Matthew Moss, whose monthly earnings from JustAnswer often exceeded his salary as an employment lawyer, told his line manager that his brother worked for the platform and he accepted payments on his brother’s behalf.
In a statement of agreed facts and outcome with Mr Moss put before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), the SRA said the solicitor began working with Manchester firm Optimal Solicitors in September 2019 and worked mainly from home in Cheshire.
He started working as a “legal expert” with JustAnswer in around 2021. The site currently offers a £50-a-month subscription that allows users to ask qualified lawyers unlimited questions.
But Mr Moss did not tell Optimal that he was working with JustAnswer, which itself “never contacted the firm” to enquire into his status as an employee.
His contract required him to seek the firm’s written consent to undertake any work “which might interfere with the performance of his duties”. Mr Moss accepted that he should have done this.
Optimal informed the solicitor that he was being made redundant in May 2024, with a notice period of three months.
During this period, Chris Germaine, Optimal’s legal director and COLP, as well as Mr Moss’s line manager, “formed concerns about the quality and quantity” of his work.
A review of Mr Moss’s emails showed he had been sending a substantial number to his personal account.
The attachments included “printouts of tables showing personal income and expenditure, indicating ‘substantial payments’ to the respondent each month by JustAnswer via Paypal, most of which exceeded his monthly take-home pay from the firm”.
Between October 2022 and June 2024, this amounted to some £81,000, as against earnings of £45,000 from the firm in that period.
The SRA said screenshots of banking transactions showed payments from JustAnswer which “generally exceeded those shown in the income/expenditure tables”.
After a Teams meeting with Mr Moss and some further checks, Mr Germaine “formed the suspicion” that he had been working for someone else.
But at an investigation meeting two days later, Mr Moss said he was not and had not been during the previous four years.
Mr Moss denied that the money from JustAnswer went to him, and “said his brother worked for them, and used his account to get paid” – but he was “not at liberty to say” what his brother did.
The solicitor, who resigned from Optimal after the meeting, later admitted that “none of his responses” were true.
He told the SRA: “At that point, I was under immense stress – and my mental state was extremely fragile. When questioned about payments from JustAnswer, I panicked.
“In a moment of severe anxiety, I falsely claimed that the payments were for work my brother had done, using my account. This was not true, and I deeply regret that I misled my employer in this way.”
Mr Germaine reported Mr Moss to the SRA later in June. As well as believing Mr Moss had been “evasive and untruthful” during the meeting, he also was concerned that if indeed the solicitor had been receiving funds for his brother, that might amount to either tax evasion or money laundering.
Mr Moss admitted acting dishonestly by providing false information to his employer about his job with JustAnswer.
In mitigation, the solicitor said that at the investigation meeting he was under “immense personal and professional stress”.
He was “likely in an extremely high state of anxiety, was psychologically overwhelmed, and was likely focused on trying to manage in the moment rather than giving proper thought to the contents of what he said”.
Mr Moss accepted he should be struck off and the SDT agreed. It said his conduct “represented a significant departure from the standards of honesty, integrity and trustworthiness expected of a solicitor” and no lesser sanction “would be sufficient to protect the public and the reputation of the profession”.
He was also ordered to pay costs of £5,800.