The rules governing when money may lawfully leave a client account — the boundary that separates proper accounting from misuse of client money.
Every withdrawal from a client account must be justified, and a payment without proper authority is a breach with serious consequences. This chapter starts with the general principle and the permitted categories of withdrawal, the sources of authority for each, and the rule that a firm can never draw more for one client than it holds for that client. It then works through the conditions for transferring the firm's costs and disbursements, the correction of money paid in by mistake, and payments under a solicitor's lien. Finally it covers the prohibition on providing banking facilities, the release of stakeholder and joint account money, the return of funds for untraced clients, and the record-keeping, reconciliation and remediation duties that keep the account in order.
