Trust Accounting Regulations

Owned by Karen McDonald
Last updated: Feb 05, 2024 by Gemma Heidemann
2 min read

Trust Accounting Rules and Regulations

Trust Accounts are the most highly regulated and scrutinised aspect of a law firm’s operation.  Non-compliant trust account activities are the highest cause of lawyers being penalised or losing their practicing certificates.  Consequently, there are numerous strict rules and regulations that must be followed by the legal profession and incorporated into the law firm.  The three golden rules for law firms in regards to their trust accounts is to one, be paranoid; two, be paranoid; and three BE PARANOID! The trust accounting module must provide this sense of security and be compliant.  The following are the rules and regulations which must be abided by in the development of this module.

Trust Accounting for Wise Owl Legal is a Standalone module.  This is because Funds in a solicitor’s trust account does not belong to the law firm – they are simply held in trust for the Law Firm.
As such Trust accounts are heavily regulated.  There is specific legislation affecting them and rigorous auditing of the records is undertaken by both external auditors to the firm and the relevant Law Society.

Legal Trust accounting is bound by legislative requirements

  • Trust Accounts Act 1973 (Qld)

  • Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld)

  • Legal Profession Regulation 2007 (Qld)

  • Legal Profession (Solicitors) Rules 2007 (Qld)

Trust accounting is a specialised branch of accounting as funds are being held by the trustee on behalf of another person or corporation. 
In some situation the rules applied differ from generally accepted accounting principles and can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

For further information and clarification of Trust Accounting, please follow the link below to go to the Queensland Law society's Trust Accounting Resources page.

http://www.qls.com.au/For_the_profession/Practice_support/Resources/Trust_accounting_resources