‘By the end, it was just blind panic’: Inside the final months at SSB Law

Good morning, readers — and welcome to this week’s Thursday Tribune.

It’s now been just shy of two months since SSB Law, a Sheffield-based law firm whose CEO once claimed it was one of the city’s “biggest employers,” finally surrendered to what we’re told were months of spiralling financial troubles. Scores of the firm’s former clients have since been landed with legal bills worth thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pounds, despite being assured their case was no-win-no-fee. Unsurprisingly, media coverage since has focused on those stories.

We wanted to do things a little differently. What did the final months of this failing company look like from the inside, to the employees who were scrabbling to hold things together? Insiders have told us when they realised things were starting to go wrong — when staff began being signed off work with stress and when cheques started to bounce. Those were the omens that, as one former staffer puts it, “under the surface, things were not as they seemed”.

That’s the subject of today’s story. Despite being about a firm of solicitors, it’s a gripping tale. 

Victoria’s long reads — investigative deep dives into local organisations and controversies — have become legendary in Sheffield since she joined The Tribune last year. They feature prominently among the most popular stories we’ve ever published, including her piece about Kommune and her blockbuster look at the Leadmill. 

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Your Tribune briefing

🎶 The organisers of Tramlines Festival have struck a new deal with Sheffield Council, agreeing to pay an annual £10,000 towards improvements in Hillsborough Park for the next five years. The renegotiation was triggered by torrential rainfall at last year’s event, which left some parts of the park unusable afterwards. In case you didn’t know, in 2019, Tramlines was sold by its local founders to Superstruct Entertainment Ltd in London, which is now the second-largest festival promoter in the entire world — more on that here.

⚽ The Telegraph reports that Sheffield United is preparing for some spring — or rather summer — cleaning of its first team, following a brutal 6-0 defeat against Arsenal, which has left the club staring at relegation. Ten players are now out of contract, including Chris Basham, who fears his horror injury last October might be career-ending. This piece in the Times argues the slaughter by Arsenal was inevitable: the team was “broken and damaged” before a ball was kicked.

🙅‍♀️ At the city’s other team, Sheffield Wednesday manager Danny Röhl has confirmed the club will not follow up on its interest in signing defender Nico Schulz after outcry from female fans. Schulz appeared in court last month charged with assaulting his ex-partner on three occasions in 2020 and, while the case was discontinued due to the alleged victim’s reported unwillingness to testify, he was ordered to donate more than £128,000 to five charities over three months. After news broke that Schulz had trained with the team, Sheffield Wednesday Women’s Supporters Group posted an open letter to Röhl on social media urging him not to pursue a deal. 

Things to do

🎻 On Friday at Firth Hall, Talking Gigs presents the Ando Glaso Collective, a Scottish group infused with the joy and enthusiasm of Roma culture. Talking gigs combine music and discussion in the first half, and a full performance in the second half, allowing both the music, and the musicians, to really speak. A pre-gig social forum will celebrate aspects of Roma culture including music, dance and food. Tickets are priced £8.50-£17 and doors open at 7.30pm.

💼 Also on Friday, the Sheffield City Archives host an interactive workshop about the South Asian travelling ayahs (servants and nannies), who travelled between India and Britain. The expansion of the British Empire facilitated movement across the globe for both colonisers and the colonised. Organised to coincide with International Women’s Day, the workshop (5.30pm-7.30pm) will focus on a largely forgotten group in this story of movement and migration.

🖼️ Pet is an exhibition of new work by Leeds-based painter Zoe Spowage at Yorkshire Artspace’s magnificent Persistence Works. Made while pregnant with her first child, these ten new paintings manifest the “musings and anxieties” the artist felt during this transformative time in her life. The work was completed in mid-November 2023, with her son was born at the end of that month. The free exhibition opens on Friday and is on throughout March.

‘By the end, it was just blind panic’: Inside the final months at SSB Law

Not long after the email dropped — the one admitting that, despite months of assurances, their employer would soon cease to exist — a crowd of furious staff gathered outside the office of Jeremy Brooke and demanded he speak to them. Brooke, a former police officer turned lawyer turned CEO of Sheffield law firm SSB Law, reportedly did his best to plead his case. 

According to former staff, he insisted that this ignoble end “was never the intention of the company”. When he and other directors had repeatedly told almost 200 employees that their jobs were safe, “that was genuinely what they thought”. He allegedly told those gathered on 14th November, who had just read that they would not receive their wages for that month, that he was going to lose his house due to the company going into administration, which it finally did in early January.

He may lose more than just that. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is proceeding “as swiftly as possible” with an investigation into practices at SSB Law, which it expects to continue until the autumn. “In the most serious cases,” reads a statement on the SRA website, SSB staff could be prosecuted at a disciplinary tribunal, which has the power to “strike solicitors off the roll and issue unlimited fines”. MPs from across the country have signed a motion calling for a further independent investigation, while also urging the government to wipe the debts of all of SSB’s former clients.

Scores of such clients are now receiving legal bills of up to £40,000 — the legal fees of the companies they brought cases against, which they are liable to pay after losing — despite being assured their cases were no-win-no-fee. One former client, Geraldine Sharp, showed the BBC paperwork stating she owes more than £17,000. “I'm phoning my family up all hours of the night crying, getting upset,” she told the reporter. “I'm 73, where am I going to get that kind of money from?" Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne, among those who signed the motion, said some of his affected constituents were "potentially talking about taking their own lives".

While no one who worked at SSB Law would compare their suffering to the hardship of these people, some have told us they also have good reason to resent their former employer. According to their accounts, the company was wrecked by a number of poor strategic decisions and mis-management. 

Multiple people noted that the company hired a large number of young, inexperienced staff “fresh out of university,” with one employee saying that “a lot of the time, going into the office felt like going back to a school environment”. These young people were “sold a dream,” she claims, that they too could one day have the lifestyle of Brooke and the other directors. “They exploited their employees’ naivety,” she says. “None of us knew what we were doing.”

The Tribune’s attempts to contact Brooke and four other members of senior SSB staff were unsuccessful. Messages sent via LinkedIn to exactly 100 former employees also went unanswered or led to nothing. But a handful of people were keen to hold the company’s senior leadership to account — and also, it seems, have an outlet for their lingering rage.