Solicitors Clients Monies

Solicitors Clients Monies

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As you might be aware, the COFA (Compliance Officer for Finance and Administration) in a solicitor's practice needs to inform SRA of any breaches in the accounting in so far as Clients Monies are concerned. This, amongst others, is what the Reporting Accountant needs to test ad report. What should be the Reporting Accountant's reaction to the existence of such report ? Can I ask for it and simply reproduce matters already reported to SRA in my own accountant's report ad go back to my office after 20 minutes? Can the solicitor client refuse showing it to me ? I do not believe that the accounting institutes and associations have yet addressed and/or  considered this issue. All very vague to me at the moment. Any comments are greatly appreciated a I need to sign off my report shortly. I found two breaches and I know one was already reported to SRA b ythe client. But there could have been another 20 that my samples did not spot.

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paddle steamer
By DJKL
03rd Jul 2015 01:32

Do you not need to increase the level of testing given breaches have been detected?

Whilst I have no idea these days re Law Society audits, and even when I did work on them we were governed by the rules up here in Scotland, generally in auditing mistakes and errors in either compliance or substantive testing would have had me reaching for my tables to calculate the new expanded sample size now required to give the required level of confidence.

You also surely need to establish the reason/reasons for the breaches and in particular have you got an internal control issue.

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