Michael Alexander was ordered to pay £75,000 in costs following the ’deliberate, repeated, and persistent’ misconduct
A man who boasted about being a “top lawyer from Manchester” has been struck off and ordered to pay £75,000 in costs after he bombarded three female legal workers with sexualised messages – including repeatedly asking one about her “big bad a**”.
Michael Alexander, 63, sent a string of lewd and unwanted messages to female professionals, leaving one barrister “sufficiently uncomfortable”.
The former law firm owner, who described himself as a ”horny b******”, sent a string of sexualised GIFs to a potential assistant and asked if she was “pert or peachy”.
He also messaged a heavily pregnant woman on LinkedIn asking if she was free for lunch, to which she dismissed his advances and suggested he used Match.com.
After being reported, Mr Alexander was taken to a tribunal hearing where he was struck off for the “deliberate, repeated, and persistent” misconduct.
Mr Alexander began working as a solicitor in October 1988, and ran his own firm from 1993 to 2015, employing 15 people at its height.
However, between January 2020 and August 2022, he was employed by Harwood Solicitors.
Between April and May 2022, he sent a female barrister, named only as Person A, a string of “sexually motivated” WhatsApp messages that he described as ”banter”.
One set of messages in April 2022 saw him message Person A saying: “How’s [Person A],” to which she replied: “Good thanks. Hope you are well.”
He then asked: “Where’s that big bad ass?” and she told him to “stick to the rules please”.
Other messages included asking her if she had a thong on, what she was wearing, and describing her as ”tops”.
He also messaged her asking if she was in bed, if she was “commando” and if she would ”bend over”.
Despite being repeatedly told that the messages were inappropriate, Mr Alexander continued to send them to Person A, with some of them being sent late at night and early in the morning.
She became ”sufficiently uncomfortable” that she asked her firm not to send him to court on a case in which she was working and eventually blocked him.
In August 2023, when messaging a woman, known as Person B, about the possibility of hiring her as his personal assistant, he asked about her weekend plans if she was free for a drink. He then went on to describe himself as a “horny b******” and that he would ”keep chasing her butt” – asking if it was ”pert or peachy”.
He also sent her several sexualised GIFs, but she said that she was busy with her boyfriend.
He later called her a ”cheeky bitch” and added: “Will you let me squeeze your arse while you are my PA, and er let me flirt with you, that’ll be fun.”
He later described her as his ”addiction”, asked about blowjobs, asked about her wearing ski pants and a see-through top and said: “I’d love to lick every inch of you. I should be so lucky.”
Following further messages, she said: “I’m ignoring that comment you filthy pervert,” and asked him to stop as she was in a relationship and had children who used her phone and might see the messages. When Person B’s boyfriend got involved and told him to leave her alone, Mr Alexander became “threatening and insulting”.
She later said that the incident had left her ”shaken, disillusioned, and more guarded in professional settings, and stated that her trust in men in professional roles had diminished”. During a subsequent investigation, Mr Alexander said that Person B’s statement was ”full of lies, inconsistencies, discrepancies and downright slander” and described it as a ”character assassination”.
Between February and March 2024 messaged a stranger, a pregnant woman known as Person C, on LinkedIn asking her ”How’s [Person C]”.
Person C considered the opening message ”strange, over-familiar and condescending because it referred to her in the third person” as she did not know him.
When she said that she would ask her, he asked her whether she was free for lunch and what she was doing that evening.
He said that he was a “top lawyer”, but she tried to end the conversation, telling him she was sleeping that evening as she was ”heavily pregnant”.
Mr Alexander persisted and described her as ”feisty”, to which she said: “You realise there are more appropriate ways to meet women than on LinkedIn. Have you heard of Match.com? Might be more your thing.”
He then messaged again asking about her “fella” and sent other messages over the following days, to which she did not respond, before she blocked him.
Mr Alexander was taken to a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) where he was struck off and ordered to pay £75,000 in costs.
It was submitted that his messages to Persons A and B ”contained extreme and explicit sexual comments, which violated their dignity, were offensive and degrading”.
Mr Alexander accepted that the messages were ”highly inappropriate and offensive” but said that no sexual advances were made in person.
Teresa Cullen, chairing the SDT hearing, said: “The Tribunal found, as Mr Alexander admitted, that his conduct was sexually motivated.
“The misconduct involved repeated and persistent communications of a sexual, degrading, and inappropriate nature to three women in circumstances where Mr Alexander’s professional status had either been invoked or formed part of the context in which the communications arose.
“The Tribunal found that Mr Alexander’s misconduct caused direct harm to each of Persons A, B and C. Person A described being affected both personally and professionally.
“The misconduct was aggravated by its deliberate, repeated, and persistent nature.
“Person A asked Mr Alexander to stop sending sexually charged messages. He ignored those requests.
“When he became aware of the complaint made against him, he complained to her chambers and telephoned her because he was ‘annoyed’.
“Mr Alexander was an experienced solicitor who should have understood the need to maintain professional boundaries and to desist immediately when asked to do so.
“The misconduct was not isolated. It involved three separate women, repeated disregard of clear requests to stop, the continuation of misconduct while regulatory investigations were ongoing, victim-blaming responses, and a lack of genuine insight demonstrated over a sustained period.
“Members of the public, properly informed of the facts, would consider it unacceptable for a solicitor who had behaved as Mr Alexander had behaved to be permitted to continue to practise.”