A reminder email saved several solicitors from having to backdate their practising certificates, explains John Elliot

A reminder email was sent on 30 January to solicitors where the Law Society was having difficulty locating bank payments for practising certificate fees. The purpose of the email was:

• To remind solicitors who had not yet paid to do so before the deadline, and
• To ask those solicitors who had already paid, and the Society could not locate the payment, to provide documentation to assist with identifying the payment.

The reminder was sent due to the seriousness of the consequences for solicitors if they fail to pay for their practising certificate on time. The Society has no power to extend the deadline of 1 February, and so solicitors and firms can find themselves in the difficult position of being required to apply to the High Court to backdate their practising certificates for late payment, at significant extra cost.

Even when a firm has made a payment, there can be a number of reasons why the payment cannot be located:

• The bank has altered or added text to the reference number,
• The Society has not received the necessary electronic fund transfer (EFT) payment form with EFT PC receipts from the firm,
• The firm has paid into the wrong bank account,
• An issue has arisen with the transfer, and it has not gone through or has been returned by the bank,
• The firm has made a transposition error on the reference.

The Society had a full team of staff working almost around the clock that weekend to assist any solicitors having difficulty with the payment process, so as to avoid solicitors and firms having to apply to the High Court, and to locate payments already made to avoid undue delay in processing applications.

The reminder email served the purpose of, thankfully, assisting a number of solicitors to avoid having to backdate their practising certificate, and allowed the Society to resolve ‘problem’ payments more rapidly than in previous years.

The reason why the emails were sent to individual solicitors is because solicitors themselves have the statutory responsibility to apply and arrange payment for their practising certificate, not the firms.

There have been very unfortunate situations in previous years where the solicitor has assumed that the firm has paid, but the payment has not been received by the deadline, resulting in the solicitors having to apply to backdate their practising certificates.

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