Circular No 103/2022
Dated 20 Apr 2022

To Members of the Malaysian Bar

Inspection of Law Firms’ Office Accounts and Client Accounts by the
Unclaimed Money Management Division of the Accountant General’s Department

The Bar Council has discussed the issue of the Unclaimed Money Management Division (“UMMD”) of the Accountant General’s Department of Malaysia inspecting law firms’ office accounts and client accounts.

Pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Unclaimed Moneys Act 1965 (“UMA”), UMMD is authorised to inspect any book, minutes book, register, record, or document of a firm in the course of the business of the firm to ascertain compliance of Part 2 of UMA by the firm.  Section 12(4) of UMA provides that it is an offence for the firm or any officer of the firm to obstruct or hinder the access to, or inspection of, the documents by UMMD.

It is the Bar Council’s view that UMMD cannot look at a law firm’s client account(s) and clients’ documents as these are privileged information.

UMMD can, however, only inspect a law firm’s office accounts records, and not its client account(s), as office accounts are part of the documents kept in the course of the business of the firm.

Should you have any enquiries, please contact Malathi Mohan (03-2050 2150), Raz Ida Nadira Razali (03-2050 2090), Md Faizal b Mahat (03-2050 2088), or send an email to lpc@malaysianbar.org.my.

Thank you.

Surindar Singh and H R Dipendra
Co-Chairpersons
Legal Profession Committee

To view the full circular, please click here to log into the Malaysian Bar website, then return to this circular and click here.