Every solicitor owes their client confidentiality. But the law also requires them to report suspected money laundering — and that can mean revealing what a client has told them. Knowing where one duty ends and the other begins is a daily reality for solicitors handling transactions and client funds, and getting it wrong carries criminal and regulatory consequences.
This lesson walks you through that tension and shows you how to navigate it in practice.
- The Core Tension and Key Bodies — the clash between confidentiality and reporting, and who receives reports and supervises compliance.
- Categories and Elements of Legal Professional Privilege — the two forms of privilege and what each requires.
- Ownership, Waiver and Loss of Privilege — who privilege belongs to, who can give it up, and how it can be lost.
- The Failure to Disclose Offence — when staying silent about money laundering becomes a crime.
- Privileged Circumstances and the Crime/Fraud Exception — when privilege switches off the duty to report, and when the duty comes back.
- Tipping Off — what you can and cannot say to a client once a report is made.
- Seeking a Defence and Protections for Reporting — getting consent to proceed and the protection for reporting in good faith.
- The MLRO, Substantive Offences and Regulatory Consequences — the reporting officer's role, the main offences, and what the regulator can do.