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Law Society guidelines for solicitors, 12 June 1998.

1. The Law Society is aware that some solicitors hold money on behalf of clients and/or trusts in accounts with the First National Building Society which come within the criteria entitling the sole or first-named holder of such accounts to receive as the case may be either free shares or a cash distribution on the occasion of the proposed conversion of the building society into a public limited company.
2. The Conversion statement available from the building society indicates that trustees may have careful consideration to any potential conflict of interest between their right to vote and/or receive free shares and the rights of the beneficiaries under the trust. Similar caution should be exercised by solicitors where such eligible accounts contain clients' monies.
3. The Law Society considers it appropriate to issue these guidelines to solicits setting out how the Society considers solicitors should deal with free shares and any cash distributed.
4. Where an account which meets the eligibility criteria for the issue of free shares or for a cash distribution was established as a dedicated account to hold the funds of one particular identifiable client or trust, the full benefit of the free shares issued or the cash distribution should be passed on to that client or trust.
5. Under the conversion scheme, one allocation only is made to each (sole or first-named) account holder regardless of how many eligible accounts are held (for example, by a solicitor on behalf of several of his clients). Therefore, in situations where a solicitor has held qualifications minimum sums of money for the prescribed period with the FNBS in an eligible account or accounts on behalf of a number of identifiable clients, the following treatment should be adopted:
   1. Where a cash distribution is received from the building society, it should be distributed equally among the solicitor's clients who would have qualified for a cash distribution had they held an eligible account in their own name with the building society.
   2. Where free shares are received, they should be distributed equally among those clients who would have qualified for a share allocation had they held an eligible account in their own name with the building society. Alternatively, in a deminimis situation where it would not make economic sense for clients to be each allocated a very small number of shares, received should be sold by the solicitor on the open market and the proceeds distributed equally to the eligible clients.
6. In situations where a practice maintains a general and non-dedicated account(s) at the First National Building Society which contains an admixture or pool of general client funds held for many clients, and which perhaps is only one of several general client accounts held with various financial institutions (and although the liability to each client will be properly and accurately reflected in the solicitor's clients ledger), it may not be possible to identify which particular clients' funds are held in which general client account and therefore it may well not prove possible to allocate the shares or cash received as between various clients.
7. If money is held on behalf of an identified client, then the shares or benefit are the client's. if difficulties are encountered in identifying who should be the beneficiaries of any proceeds received in respect of the building society's distribution, application may be made to the court, although the practicality of such an application would have to be considered in the light of the costs and the value of the shares involved.