Legal Profession Uniform General Amendment (Miscellaneous) Rule 2019

13/12/2019

The Legal Services Council (LSC) made the Legal Profession Uniform General Amendment (Miscellaneous) Rule 2019 https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/regulations/2019-610.pdf under s 419 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law 2014 (Uniform Law). The Regulation has been published and takes effect today.

The effect of the amendments is to:

• Clarify the duration of a practising certificate that is not suspended, cancelled or surrendered - to expressly include 30 June as its last day.
• Assist solicitors of law practices holding money received in certain circumstances for investment purposes and/or money received pursuant to a written direction, to comply with their obligations regarding these types of trust money - by creating new categories to account for them.
• Promote efficiency, certainty and safety in complying with a client's directions to withdraw controlled moneys - by creating a hierarchy of authorised people who may withdraw money from the relevant controlled money account if the principal of the law practice is unavailable.
• Promote clarity and accountability - by specifying the details a law practice must record when payments are made from a controlled money account.
• Enhance order and transparency - by mandating that a solicitor's law practice opens and maintains a file for each matter.
• Save solicitors' time and increase the efficiency of routine auditing - by mandating that a law practice record the location of any regulated property related to a matter in the register of files opened.
• Allow efficient auditing and file transfer by setting a standard as to how registers of files opened, registers of safe custody documents and registers of financial interests are to be maintained - including legibly, in English and accessible at all times to an external intervenor, an investigator and a person conducting a compliance audit.