Report comment

All solicitors are aware of the need to keep client and office funds in separate accounts. It is not string theory or quantum mechanics but a simple dichotomy between monies held on behalf of others and monies that belong to the firm. Any legal practitioner knows that he cannot treat the respective funds as interchangeable at will and this particular experienced lawyer must have realised the implications of his actions at the time.

Yet he continued in breach, postponing the day of discovery as long as possible. The fact that he was a man of unblemished reputation cannot excuse him from a pattern of behaviour that in retrospect he may find difficult to condone.