A SOLICITOR has been jailed for six months for fiddling clients' accounts.

Michael Seward, aged 45, was found to have mishandled £69,000 worth of funds by colleagues at a Westhoughton law firm.

It triggered an inquiry by the Law Society and the police which lasted five years.

Seward was found to have illicitly freed up money from some clients' accounts to cover shortfalls in others over a four-year period.

The offences -- mostly involving the estates of dead clients -- took place when his own practice, Michael Seward and Co in Warrington, Cheshire, suffered financial problems.

Seward later went bankrupt. His cheating cost him his marriage and home and he was struck off as a solicitor in 1999 by the Law Society.

Judge Jeffrey Lewis told Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court he was passing a custodial sentence to deter any other solicitors who may be tempted to cheat their clients.

He told Seward, who admitted eight charges of false accounting after his not guilty pleas to theft were accepted by the prosecution: "The safety of money and the trust of solicitors by clients plus the integrity of accounting systems are and should be sacrosanct."

Earlier, Andrew Long, prosecuting, said father-of-three Seward, of Field View Drive, Orford, near Warrington, became a solicitor in 1982 and set up his own practice in the 1990s. But the firm fell into difficulties when Seward expanded the firm and a potential partner pulled out of making a £40,000 investment. In 1997, he was fined £3,000 for breach of accountancy rules and he sold the company to another law firm.

, Widdows Mason, on condition he was given employment.

But in July 1997, Seward was suspended after senior partners in the practice at Market Street, Westhoughton, discovered irregularities in the client files he brought with him from Seward and Co. He resigned from Widdows Mason.

Seward, who has since remarried and now works at a mortgage brokers, plans to appeal against his jail sentence.

Defence counsel David Lane QC said there was "not one jot of evidence" that Seward had made any personal gain through his dishonesty. He added: "Prison will do no good to this man or the public."