SOLICITORS’ TRUST ACCOUNTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 48, Issue 14625, 27 March 1922, Page 5

SOLICITORS’ TRUST ACCOUNTS.

(To the Editor.) ■Sir, —The recent cases of defaulting lawyers draw attention to the utter futility of the present system of audit of solicitors' trust accounts. This audit is no safeguard against dishonesty, and it is usually impossible for any auditor to discover defalcations by this method until it is too late. If the embezzling lawyer simply neglects to pay trust moneys into his trust account, and to enter them in his trust acount books, lie is thus able to use them for his own purposes without detection until he is hopelessly involved. It is surprising how long-suffering the public is over this matter. The Government should impose an annual license fee of £25 on every solicitor; and should set up a fund out of these license fees to reimburse embezzled moneys, any balance of the fund to belong to the Government. This method would in many ease cost less than the present useless audit of a solicitor’s trust account, and would have the important advantage of providing funds to reimburse those robbed. In the past there have been too many sad eases of elderly men and widows —'persons who are precluded by reason of advanced age or ill-health from earning a living—robbed of their money by dishonest,solicitors;. The legal profession is the-closest trade union in the Dominion, and imposes its own scale of fees on th c public. An annual license fee of £25 for a solicitor would be a very low one, when it is remembered that an auctioneer has to pay £4O a year, and the provision of a fund such as I have suggested should be insisted on by every chamber of coinmtiicc ire New Zealand.—l am etc.,. ' CITIZEN.