Most Ontario lawyers and paralegals probably already know that the Law Society of Ontario has rules about how much physical cash you’re allowed to accept. You might also be aware that there are additional exceptions and finer details about this topic.
Remember that cash transactions are regulated by Part 3 and section 19 of By-Law 9. The Law Society of Ontario has helpful guides on their website to assist licensees in making sense of this part of the By-Law. We’ve studied the By-Law, and the LSO’s guides, and we’ve worked collaboratively with the LSO to ensure that our platform conforms to the relevant requirements.
In this article, we’ll explain how TrustReq can help Ontario lawyers determine whether or not you are permitted to accept a particular cash transaction. We call this a cash acceptance pre-check. You might be surprised to learn that a pre-check is not quite as simple as just asking yourself if the total sum of cash is above or below By-Law Nine’s cash limit, which is $7,500 Canadian dollars, at the time of this article.
Starting from your TrustReq dashboard, click on Cash Compliance on the left hand side. Then click on “cash acceptance pre-check”.
After you’ve finished inputting the amount of the proposed transaction, the next step is to indicate whether or not an exception applies to the transaction, based on section 6 of By-Law 9. If you aren’t sure, you can click on the link text at this step. Doing so will take you to our detailed explanation of section 6 of By-Law 9, which has been sourced from the LSO’s website.
After you’ve completed those three steps, you’ll see three numbers appear. The first number indicates the sum total of all exempt and non-exempt cash received in this matter. Don’t worry if this number is larger than the regulatory limit, because as we just mentioned, this number includes transactions that were exempt from the cash limit as well as transactions that were not exempt.
The second number that you’ll see is the non-exempt cash you can currently accept before reaching the regulatory limit. If this number is zero or below zero, then you are not permitted to accept the proposed transaction.
The third and final number that you’ll see is the non-exempt limit you’ll have remaining if you do accept this cash. Again, you normally want this number to be at or above zero. If it is below zero, then you are not permitted to accept the proposed transaction.
To ensure the cash acceptance pre-check system provides you with reliable results, make sure that you and your team are diligent about recording into TrustReq any and all cash transactions for each and every matter. To keep this article brief, we’ve created a separate article that explains how to record a cash transaction.
TrustReq is a cloud based service that helps Ontario lawyers and paralegals comply with their regulatory obligations. Start your 14-day free trial today!
