Rule 70 Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners

Rule 70 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners (RPC) 2023 is about Monitoring of clients and specified activities. It is under Part III (Risk Based Approach and Client Due Diligence) of Chapter 2 (Guidelines and Rules on Anti-money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism for Legal Practitioners) of the Rules. It provides as follows:

(1) The degree and nature of monitoring by a law firm or legal practitioner will depend on the type of legal practice, the size of the law firm, the identified ML and TF risks and the nature of the specified activity provided.

(2) A Law firm or legal practitioner will need to have a full and up-to-date understanding of their clients’ business to satisfy fiduciary duties towards clients.

(3) A legal practitioner or staff in law firms should be adequately trained to have requisite understanding of those events that should trigger additional due diligence or a refreshing of existing due diligence.

(4) Monitoring is often best achieved by individuals having contact with the client, either face-to-face or by other means of communication, provided that such monitoring does not automatically convert law firms or legal practitioner to law enforcement or investigative authority vis-d-vis the client.

(5) Monitoring of advisory relationships cannot be achieved solely by reliance on automated systems and whether any such systems would be appropriate will depend in part on the nature of a legal practice and resources reasonably available to the law firm or legal practitioner.

(6) A law firm or legal practitioner shall assess the adequacy of systems, controls, and monitoring processes on a periodic basis, and document the results accordingly.

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