Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015
Compliance
One instrument governs trust money in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. This is what it requires of a general trust account, and what TrustLedger does about each rule.
One law, three states
New South Wales and Victoria have operated under the Legal Profession Uniform Law since 1 July 2015. Western Australia joined on 1 July 2022. All three are governed by the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015, the instrument that sets out how trust money is received, recorded, paid, transferred and reconciled.
A lot of trust accounting software is sold state by state. It does not need to be. The obligation is the same obligation in all three states: the same rule numbers, the same records, the same trust year, the same notification duties. TrustLedger is one product for all three.
What differs is who you answer to and where you lodge. That is the whole of the difference.
Where each state lodges
| State | Regulatory authority for trust money | Trust year |
|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | Council of the Law Society of New South Wales | 1 April to 31 March |
| Victoria | Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner | 1 April to 31 March |
| Western Australia | Legal Practice Board of Western Australia | 1 April to 31 March |
New South Wales designates different authorities for different functions. For trust money it is the Law Society Council. Complaints go to the Legal Services Commissioner.
Rule by rule
- r 36 Receipting of trust money
- Consecutively numbered receipts. The date the money arrived and the date the receipt was issued are recorded separately, along with who it came from, the matter, the form it arrived in (cash, cheque, electronic transfer, direct debit) and what it was for.
- r 44 Trust account receipts cash book
- Every receipt writes its cash book entry in the same database transaction that creates the receipt. Either both exist or neither does. The month exports to XLSX or CSV.
- r 45 Trust account payments cash book
- Every payment writes its cash book entry the same way, recorded against the matter, the payee, the method and the reason.
- r 46 Trust account transfer journal
- A transfer between two matters is written as a journal entry on both ledgers, each side carrying a reference to the other. It never touches the cash book, because no money has entered or left the trust account.
- r 47 Recording transactions in trust ledger accounts
- One ledger account per matter, opened with the matter and carrying a running balance. An electronic payment will not submit without the payee's account name, BSB and account number.
- r 48 Reconciliation of trust records
- Bank statement to cash book to ledger totals, monthly, with outstanding deposits, unpresented cheques and bank errors itemised. Produces the bank reconciliation statement and the trust trial balance, and tells you whether it balanced or by exactly how much it did not.
Rules cited are those of the Legal Profession Uniform General Rules 2015, which apply in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.
The trust year and the external examination
The trust year runs from 1 April to 31 March in all three states. After it closes, a law practice that held trust money during the year (transit money aside) has its records examined by an external examiner, whose report goes to the regulatory authority for the state.
The statutory date for that report is 31 May. Where 31 May falls on a non-business day the states have not always moved it the same way, so confirm the current year's date with your own authority: the Law Society of NSW, the VLSB+C or the Legal Practice Board of WA.
What an examiner works through is the records themselves: the receipts in sequence, the cash books, the transfer journal, the ledger for each matter, and the monthly reconciliations for every month of the year. TrustLedger keeps all of them, in the form the Rules describe. The cash books, the ledger list, the bank reconciliation and the trial balance download as XLSX or CSV. Receipts, payments and matter statements come out as PDF. What you hand over is a set of documents, not a login.
Rule 50: the notifications people forget
Rule 50 of the Uniform General Rules imposes three notification duties on a law practice, identically in all three states:
| Rule | What must be notified | When |
|---|---|---|
| 50(1) | Establishing a general trust account | Within 14 days |
| 50(2) | The authorised signatories, as at 1 July | During July, each year |
| 50(3) | Closing a general trust account | Within 14 days |
Rule 51 adds a fourth, on ceasing to hold trust money or closing the practice or an office. Read the rule for its period.
50(2) is the one that gets missed. It is annual, it is attached to no other event in the practice, and nothing prompts it. TrustLedger does not send Rule 50 reminders yet, so put the July one in your calendar now. It costs nothing, and the omission is the kind an examiner notices.
Where the responsibility sits
TrustLedger keeps records. Compliance is what you do with client money: whether you bank it correctly, whether you reconcile every month, and whether what you enter is true. Software can make the record accurate and the reports complete. It cannot review your judgement.
Your practising certificate, your obligations under the Uniform Law and your external examination remain yours. Nothing on this site is legal, accounting or financial advice, and no regulator has approved, certified or endorsed this product.