What are the consequences of deliberate taking of trust funds?

We do not go so far as, on one reading of it, Bolton v. Law Society, [1994] 2 All E.R. 486, did. We do not think that, in relation to penalty, maintaining public trust in the profession trumps all other considerations including the personal circumstances of the Respondent. There may be mitigating factors even for the deliberate taking of trust funds. For example, the lawyer’s powers of judgment may have been thrown completely off-kilter by illness or by a sudden shock. He or she may have been under emotional pressures that nobody can be expected to resist. However, we think that the Respondent’s circumstances in this case, while they certainly elicit compassion, cannot be described as mitigating factors analogous to these. Without in any way minimizing how difficult a time it was for him, the crisis he went through, on the evidence we have, was not such as to impair the Respondent’s capacity for moral judgment. Nor did he act under the pressure of a sudden and overwhelming event. He engaged in a series of withdrawals of trust funds, known to be wrongful, extending over many months. Nor can one say for sure that he will never find himself under this kind of emotional and financial pressure again.