The Law Society of BC

Remitting Interest to the Law Foundation
Date: October 2001; updated September 2005	Downloadable formats: Word
Questions / Comments? Please contact Barbara Buchanan or David Bilinsky
Copyright © 2001 The Law Society of British Columbia

Sample Letter to Financial Institution

Remitting Interest to the Law Foundation of British Columbia (http://www.lawfoundationbc.org)

CONFIDENTIAL

Dear ______________:

Re: Trust Account #

By this letter, I am [we are] advising your institution that the above account is a pooled trust account that will contain the funds of more than one client.

The Law Society of BC requires that a pooled trust account shall:

(i) be interest bearing,

(ii) provide monthly cancelled cheques and bank statements to the lawyer,

(iii) be readily available to be drawn upon by the lawyer,

(iv) be designated as a "trust" account on the records of the savings institution (and the lawyer), and

(v) be an account in respect of which the savings institution has agreed with the lawyer to pay interest to the Law Foundation.

Law Society Rule 3-52(2)(a) requires that every lawyer who opens or maintains a pooled trust account "instruct the savings institution, in writing, to remit the net interest earned on the account to the Law Foundation of British Columbia."

This letter is my [our] instruction to you to calculate the interest on the above account at the rate and in the manner agreed upon between your institution and the Law Foundation of British Columbia, and to remit such interest directly to the Law Foundation according to the terms of that agreement (in the event that there is no agreement in place, please contact The Executive Director of the Law Foundation.) This letter authorizes and directs you to provide the Law Foundation with such information and explanation as it requires to verify the calculation of the interest remitted, including:

(i) account balance information during the reporting period,

(ii) the interest rate, and

(iii) interest earned.

A standard form remittance report which should accompany that remittance can be obtained from the Law Foundation.

Please forward the interest directly to:

The Law Foundation of British Columbia
1340 - 605 Robson Street
Vancouver BC V6B 5J3

and please advise me [us] of the amount of each transmittal.

I [We] also draw to your attention a requirement of the Legal Profession Act, S.B.C. 1998, c.9:

63 (13) Despite any agreement between a lawyer and a savings institution, if the lawyer's pooled trust fund account is overdrawn by an amount exceeding $1,000, the savings institution must, as soon as practicable, inform the Society of the particulars.

(14) Subsection (13) and the failure of a savings institution to comply with it has no effect on the civil liability of that savings institution to any person, and that liability, if any, must be determined as though that subsection were not in force.

Yours truly,
[Name]

cc: Law Foundation of British Columbia

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