With September comes the new season, the new school year and an opportunity to look back as summer moves into fall. During this year, important changes were made to the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct and the Rules of Disciplinary Enforcement relating to the way attorneys handle client money, either in Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts or trusts. These rules were amended because the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania felt that, while the Office of Disciplinary Counsel could adequately investigate and litigate cases of embezzlement and theft, the board’s ability to identify and prevent these crimes needed to be strengthened.

The amendment of the rules was motivated by the board’s desire to ensure that dishonesty could be stopped before a client was injured beyond the attorney’s ability to make restitution. The board, which regularly reviews the information it collects and looks for trends, noticed that a significant number of cases included facts where the attorney held a client’s money to “protect” it or created a trust, with the attorney acting as trustee. In some cases, the trust money was never deposited into an account and no banks were involved as a safety net. In other instances, the attorneys misled banks through forgery of documents. The board also looked at cases where attorneys provided investment advice to clients or purchased investment vehicles for them that subsequently failed.

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