Paul Baxendale-Walker

Paul Baxendale-Walker, also known under the pseudonym Paul Chaplin, is a talk show host, former lawyer and an author of legal text books. He is, together with Andrew Thornhill QC, the author of The Law and Taxation of Remuneration Trusts (Key Haven, 1997) and also the Purpose Trusts (1999, 2009 [2nd ed.]).

Paul Baxendale-Walker was born of Anglo-Brazilian parents, but he was orphaned and grew up in Children's Homes. He read for a degree in law at Hertford College, Oxford and subsequently qualified as a barrister and solicitor.

Walker worked in taxation law at the Bar in Lincoln's Inn and then in various City law firms and Arthur Andersen, before establishing his "Baxendale Walker" practice in Mayfair in 1994.

In 1994, Baxendale-Walker advised the trustees on the taking of loans from a pension fund established for the benefit of employees. Unknown to him, the borrowers were fraudsters and £2,135,000 went missing. In subsequent civil proceedings, Mr. Justice Etherton dismissed the claim that Baxendale-Walker had given dishonest assistance in a breach of trust but held him liable for knowing receipt of the fees which he had received, saying that completing the transaction was "a gross error of professional judgment". In the course of the civil trial, it came to light that he had given a reference for a non-existent persona of the fraudsters, a move that the judge said showed "breathtaking lack of professional judgement". As a consequence, in 2005, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal suspended him as a solicitor for three years. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision in 2007.

Baxendale-Walker was struck off the roll of solicitors by the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal on 11 January 2007, on the grounds that he had a conflict of interest in advising his clients on his own tax schemes. He subsequently claimed that the Law Society and others had conspired to put him out of business. On 18 April 2011, his claim was struck out by the High Court on the basis that it had no real prospect of success, and on the grounds that the defendants were immune from civil suit and/or protected by privilege, regardless of whether they had committed any wrong. He sued the Law Society in California Federal Court for millions of dollars, arising out of what he claims to have been unlawful interference by the Law Society in his US legal business, but the case was dismissed with prejudice, an action that was upheld on appeal in 2015. Linked proceedings were issued in the Virginia Eastern District Court in February 2016, relating to the evidence relied on in the California case.

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