Is the LSO's "Referral Fee Agreement" form mandatory?

Yes. Licensees the Referral Agreement provided by the Law Society. The Referral Agreement must be provided to the client at the time of the referral or as soon as practicable after the referral. Where a referral was made before or on April 27, 2017 but there was no enforceable agreement for the payment of a referral fee as of that date, the requirement that the Referral Agreement has been entered into may be met by entering into the Referral Agreement at any time prior to the payment of the referral fee.

Along with the Referral Agreement, licensees are also required to provide clients with the document entitled Law Society Requirements for Referral Fees – What Clients Need to Know. The client must be provided with a reasonable opportunity to review and consider the information provided.

TrustReq enables you to generate referral fee agreements that are compliant and consistent with the precise form prescribed by the LSO. There are a few advantages to generating this form in your TrustReq "Referral Fee Matter" page:

• Save time: The LSO's required form contains mandatory language and doesn't permit much deviation, so you'd think preparing one would already be pretty quick. You'll notice; however, that the LSO's form also includes editable fields in square brackets where you must insert the details of your situation on a case by case basis, and delete language that doesn't apply to your situation. Don't waste time tediously editing that document, just answer a few simple questions on TrustReq, and the platform will fill it for you.

• Peace of mind: When your Referral Fee Agreement is done generating, the completed product will take into account your answers to the questions we asked, while leaving the required language undisturbed. This way, you can feel confident that the document being generated carefully reflects the standardized form required by the LSO.

• Stay organized (and ready for an audit): Although you probably have a document management system like most responsible licensees, perhaps on an internal server, Dropbox or Google Drive, you can rest easy knowing that your Referral Fee Agreement will be neatly organized in your "Referral Fee Matter" display page for each individual referral matter in which you become involved. Rather than digging through the files and folders of your computer, simple browse, sort and filter all of your referral matters (and related documents) in a clean and organized manner on TrustReq.