Charities could benefit from unclaimed client funds, says Law Society
Howard Lake | 20 February 2009 | News
Law firms in England and Wales could put thousands of pounds of unclaimed client money to good causes, according to the Law Society Charity.
The Charity wants solicitors to donate unclaimed funds to charity rather than let them ‘gather dust’. An amendment last year to the Solicitors Account Rules allows balances of £50 or less of unclaimed funds per client to be released to charity without approval of the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
An amount of over £50 of a client’s unclaimed funds will have an indemnity for that amount provided by the Law Society Charity subject to the donor firm having prior SRA approval to make the donation. All efforts must be made to reimburse the client first. Where funds have been donated to the Law Society Charity and a client subsequently requests the funds, the Charity reimburses the firm.
Chairman of the Law Society Charity Nigel Dodds said there could be unclaimed funds for a number of reasons, including having an untraceable beneficiary of an estate, refunds from disbursements on conveyancing transactions or estimates for work that are paid by clients but end up costing less than the estimate.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.