How to ensure your practice complies?

Following the implementation of the EU 5th Money Laundering Directive, the update to the Legal Sector Affinity Group guidance in March 2023 and the recent SRA annual report on the topic, the threat of money laundering clearly remains high on the agenda. The suggestion that the Land Registry will move to a fully digital system puts more pressure on identity checks. The recent explosion in the use of the internet means that cyber-crime is on the increase, and world events means that the risk registers are lengthening.

It is tempting to worry, but take heart! Steps can be taken to ensure that your firm is as healthy as it can be.

By Lawyers monitors the requirements of the profession and provides practical guidance and precedents to assist practitioners. This helps everyone to comply with the obligations and to assess and manage individual client and firm-wide risk.

The key to confidence in this area is empowerment: 

• Empower all staff to identify actual risk within a file. 

A recommended approach to this issue is to enable all staff to better identify actual risk within the firm’s caseload. If a transaction raises doubts, then further investigations become necessary. The most efficient way to do this is to provide staff with access to matter-specific risk assessment tools such as the Money Laundering Risk Assessment, File Review Form and File Closing Checklist.

The forms, like every By Lawyers precedent accessed directly from a LEAP matter, quickly merge with the matter data and efficiently saves back to the LEAP matter again.

For website users, the forms download as Word documents for easy completion.

• Empower practice managers to identify actual risk within the firm. 

Practice managers benefit from valuable inclusions such as the Money Laundering Risk Assessment – Firm Review, Business Continuity Plan and Cyber Essentials Checklist which help the firm to better consider the overall practice risk, based on key metrics around the client base, geographical risk and the core expertise of fee earners.

By Lawyers subscribers can find the precedents in the Practice Management publication.

• Empower everyone to enjoy practice more.