Effective 9/1/11, Amendments to Rule of Professional Conduct 1.15 will change the definition of eligible financial institutions. Under the new amended rule:

Financial institutions that want to be eligible to hold any lawyer trust accounts must agree to report trust account overdrafts to the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission (ARDC). (See Rule 1.15(h).) Financial institutions must submit a written overdraft notification agreement to the ARDC. (source http://www.state.il.us/court/SupremeCourt/Rules/Amend/2011/070111_Rule_Amendments.pdf)

An interesting caveat is that this applies to all lawyer trust accounts, whether IOLTA or non-IOLTA. How in the world are we supposed to find the non-IOLTA lawyer accounts in our system?

We label the accounts "Client Fund" at account opening. However, as I understand the law, it is the law firm's responsibility to be certain that you have signed the agreement to report overdrafts. So, your lawfirms with client funds should be contacting you.

I think that is what we'll be moving towards doing. I should mention that the rule covers IOLTAs and all other client fund accounts controlled by a lawyer.

Thanks KFitz for offering that information! We already have the agreement to sign, but we won't send it in until we feel comfortable with what we are doing on our end since our bank will be listed on their site.

Years ago when a similar requirement was enacted in AL, we pulled reports by NAICS and SIC codes and any account title with the words LAW, ATTORNEY, ESQ or ESQUIRE. We were also able to cross-reference IOLTA accounts to other attorney accounts since we had a CIF database.

We then established a special user ID code on the account level which identified the account as being subject to the new law (keyed once we received the required agreement back from attorney). A report was generated daily listing each account with this code that had overdrafts. Worked pretty well.