You may only use our Client Account for transactions required by and ancillary to the matter on which you are instructed. We are not permitted to provide a banking service through the Client Account and the SRA has issued a Warning Notice in this respect. We must follow this. Where you are not sure if a transaction you wish to undertake would be permitted, then you should ask our Finance Director or Finance Controller, in advance and leaving good time in case the transaction needs to be effected in a different way.
In practical terms, the test is whether the transaction you are being asked to make is an essential part of the client/matter and the direct subject of your advice. There has to be a real need for it to come through our Client Account as part of completion, deal costs, the settlement etc. However, where client has an obligation to meet, even if the client wants to use funds in our Client Account for this purpose, we cannot make that payment, Instead, we have to pay the client, and the client has to pay it on. We are there for necessary payments, not for the client's convenience.