Trust money

A lawyer or law firm should not appropriate a client's trust money until certain regulations are met, which are different for each state in Australia.

[2] Trust money is held to cover the practitioner’s fees and disbursements over a period of time and may be required to be topped up as a matter progresses.

[5] In 1984 the New South Wales Law Reform Commission published the "Fourth Report on the Legal Profession: Solicitors' Trust Accounts".

[3] The national legal profession model bill, which was supposed to eliminate the differences, took about ten years to develop and was finally signed off by the Standing Committee of Attorneys General, (SCAG), in 2011.

If you do not lodge an application for a cost assessment with the Supreme Court of NSW within sixty days after being given the bill, the solicitor will be able to withdraw the money from the trust account.

[31] SA is yet to push the national legal profession model bill through parliament, because of a political deadlock over compensation for victims of trust account fraud.

One high-profile South Australian case was with Brenton Willoughby, a law clerk at Magarey Farlam Lawyers, and involved $4.5 million.

[48] The South Australian Attorney-General at the time, Michael Atkinson, likened his Supreme Court cross-examination over the "stashed cash affair" to being "tortured with a comfy cushion".

Tietyens ran a contributory mortgage scheme backed by about 1,100 investors that furnished an investment of about $42 million in the Tally Ho Retirement Village in Burwood East in Melbourne.

A New South Wales Criminal lawyer, Brett Galloway, was found guilty in 2012 for charges relating to his trust account handling.

[56] In South Australia in the 1960s a guarantee fund was set up from a percentage of the interest made on clients' money while in legal trust accounts.

Some of the clients of Mr Green who lost their money in this case were other solicitors.Other cases included: Savas Christodolou, Richard Makarucha, Romuald Martin, Geoffrey Ogge, Ronald Silverstein, Stanley Rosenberg In general, the fidelity funds or guarantee funds do not admit claims involving criminal conduct or dishonest conduct on the part of the lawyers.

Fidelity funds ironically are not designed to rectify infidelities, rather they cater for losses arising from honest mistakes by lawyers and/or their lack of investment acumen.

In 2012 South Australian Law Society director of Professional Standards, Ros Burke, advised practitioners that they could use the Unclaimed Money Act to clear the balance.