A Lawyer’s 7-Point Plan for Trust Account …（一个律师的信托帐户级计划u2026）.pdfVIP

LexisNexis® Law Firm Practice Managament WHITE PAPER SERIES A Lawyer’s 7-Point Plan for Trust Account Management: How to reduce liability and avoid sanctions with good trust accounting practices. SUMMARY By: Steven J. Best, Esq., Affinity Consulting Group, LLC, Alpharetta GA Many jurisdictions require attorneys to maintain lawyer’s trust accounts, and those accounts, and jurisdictional rules, come in many shapes and sizes. As a lawyer, it’s your job to act as a fiduciary or virtual “trustee” of client funds, and as such, you must scrupulously follow stringent standards of good faith and transparency. While most of us associate this fiduciary obligation only with money, your duty extends to the protection of ANY client property . Though there may be some debate about the exact event that led to the creation of trust accounts, the purpose is clear: to safeguard and protect client funds, while also protecting the lawyer from the perception of improper, or illegal behavior. In order to avoid any appearance of impropriety, lawyers are typically required by state, provincial or bar rules to segregate client funds from business funds. Considering the potential for confusion about all the regulations governing trust accounts – and the extremely serious consequences for violating them – it’s worth taking the time to refresh your memory to make sure your firm stays lock-step in line with every requirement. A Lawyer’s 7-Point Plan for Trust Account Management 1. Avoiding the appearance of impropriety: Other states have very similar requirements. Note specifically Keeping trust funds separated from firm funds that Georgia requires that a lawyer maintain an account in “an A lawyer trust account is essentially a business checking approved financial institution”. account or its equivalent, established by the firm to hold Comment one on the same reference sta