Insights
Client money and the SRA Accounts Rules
Client money is the part of a firm's work that the regulator reads first and forgives least. The rules are short, the ledgers are long, and the breach is nearly always a small thing that nobody noticed for months: a balance that should have gone back, a disbursement paid from the wrong account, interest that was never worked out, a payee whose bank details changed in an email nobody rang to check.
The articles below are about those small things. Each starts from a file as a judge or a supervisor meets it afterwards, says what the rule required, and shows where the record already held the answer. Several end with what the software does about it, because Bracton's ledger refuses a movement that would breach the rules in the cashier's own words, and reads every client balance overnight against the file it belongs to.
Ten articles, newest first. All the writing.
The reconciliation you signed without reading
The three balances agree and the signature takes two minutes. The breach sits in the lines underneath, which nobody read.
The client money nobody sent back
Dormant balances on closed matters agree to the penny with the bank, which is why the five weekly reconciliation never finds them.
The money that came from somewhere else
Identification and source of funds are settled when the file opens, and then the matter runs for months while the money behaves differently from the story the file records.
The disbursement you paid and never recharged
A payment out is cash the firm has already spent, and nothing in the ordinary billing routine asks whether it ever came back.
The interest nobody worked out
The interest policy most firms rely on was written when client money earned almost nothing, and the threshold in it has not been read since. The question surfaces when a client asks.
The bank details that changed by email
An email arrives the day before completion with new bank details and a plausible reason. The verification that stops it has to be a step on the file, not a habit.
The money on account that ran out
Money paid on account runs out months before anyone reads the client ledger against the unbilled time on the same matter, and the client hears about it from the bill.
The breach register with nothing in it
A register holding three entries for a whole year rarely means a clean firm. It far more often means the breaches were never recognised as breaches at the time.
The risk assessment that describes a different firm
The document was written once and the practice grew around it, and the distance between the two is what an inspection finds.
The matter you opened before the checks were done
Conflict checks run against memory, identification taken but never verified, client care letters drafted and never sent. The gaps surface weeks later, at exchange or at audit, when fixing them costs most.
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