An award-winning solicitor lauded for her rags-to-riches rise has been struck off after she misled a group of nurses over the sale of a buy-to-let property.
Julie Condliffe, 48, led the three nurses to believe they were buying the home in the North East as an investment – but she already owned the property and it was never transferred to the nurses.
Condliffe, a property entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker, then tried to claim the arrangement had always been for them to lease it, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard.
She had been approached by the nurses through the Zimbabwean community, where she was said to be well-known and influential.
The tribunal heard she misled the ‘inexperienced investors’ who believed they were buying the freehold and concluded she ‘clearly exploited her professional status to promote the trust and credibility arising from being a qualified solicitor’.
It added: ‘Ms Condliffe’s misconduct had a significant impact on the wider community and, in particular, on the Zimbabwean women she claimed to be empowering. She caused significant damage to the reputation of the legal profession. The harm she caused was clearly foreseeable.’
The tribunal heard that in 2018, she brokered a deal for the three nurses to buy a three-bedroom house in Peterlee, County Durham. The three friends handed over £27,999, a sourcing fee of £3,000 to her firm and spent £3,720 on renovations.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that Julie Condliffe falsely told three nurses they were buying a residential property in the northeast for which they had paid a total of £31,000
Julie Condliffe in Law Society portrait
Condliffe later sent messages suggesting the property was being transferred, including one text saying ‘The property will be yours from tomorrow.’ But the relationship broke down and in 2021 the investors issued county court proceedings which resulted in a settlement for £19,000.
One of the nurses, Pawel Jaskolski, 42, who works in mental health, said he believed she targeted nurses because they were ‘compassionate people’.
Condliffe denied knowingly misleading the investors, saying she genuinely believed the property was a lease option purchase and that this had been an honest misunderstanding. She was struck off and ordered to pay £48,000 costs.
According to Condliffe, whose portrait hung for years in the offices of the Law Society, she grew up destitute in Zimbabwe, the youngest of eight children. She never knew her father, who she claims was shot dead in the Zimbabwean War of Independence, also known as the Rhodesian Bush War, in the 1970s when she was a baby.
Her mother moved the family to the country’s capital Harare, working for nothing for five years to acquire a ramshackle home.
When the family’s benefactor died, they were evicted and lost everything, apparently sparking Condliffe’s childhood dream of fighting injustice as a lawyer.
Her family was said to have scraped together £500 to send her to Britain to pursue her legal dream, fuelled by watching episodes of legal comedy-drama Ally McBeal through the window of a neighbour’s house, in 1998.
She worked in McDonald’s in Watford and in care homes while studying nursing and then law at the University of Hertfordshire.
She was first registered as a solicitor in 2012 and claimed to have bought her first property in 2006 and then built up a portfolio of more than 30.
Her apparent success led to recognition from the Law Society, the body representing the legal profession. She was a social mobility ambassador for the society and a large, artfully shot portrait, in which she posed in profile wearing a boxing glove, was hung in its offices in London.
In 2017 she was included in a list of the most influential Christians from Zimbabwe.
She was living with her husband and three children in a four-bed home, worth about £350,000, in Rushden, Northamptonshire.
Condliffe’s law firm, Creative Legal Solutions, was awarded Best Boutique Auction Law Firm 2022 and Specialist Solicitor of the Year 2022 in the SME News legal awards.
She has several thousand followers on social media, largely from the Zimbabwean community.
The Law Society distanced itself from its former poster girl, saying: ‘The Law Society Social Mobility Ambassador scheme ended in 2023. Julie Condliffe is not a current social mobility ambassador, having previously served in the role from 2017 until 2020. Her portrait is not displayed in the Law Society building.’
Condliffe did not respond to repeated requests to comment but last year she gave a series of online interviews to promote her book in which she admitted to making mistakes but claimed to be the victim of a ‘social media smear campaign’.