The rules that keep client money separate from a firm's own — what counts as client money, where it must sit, and how it may be touched.
Client money belongs to the client, and the SRA Accounts Rules exist to make sure it stays that way. This chapter starts with the foundations: what a client account is, the principle of keeping client money and firm money apart, and how client money and mixed payments are defined. It then follows the money through its lifecycle — when receipts must be paid into the client account and when they need not be, the grounds on which money may be withdrawn, including the steps required before a firm takes its own costs, and the obligations to account for a fair sum of interest and return money promptly when there is no longer reason to hold it. It closes with the safeguards around the system: record-keeping, the five-weekly reconciliation and the response to a shortfall, the consequences of breach, and the conditions for using a third party managed account instead.
