AML/CTF compliance for law firms

Each client engagement becomes its own compliance unit. Whether it's a property conveyance, commercial acquisition, or trust administration, duely creates separate Matters with independent scoping, risk assessment, and evidence trails, reflecting how legal practice actually works.

• • Separate Matters for each designated service engagement
• • Independent compliance lifecycle per engagement
• • Service-specific scoping for different legal practice areas
• • Full audit trail per matter, not just per client

Systematically map complex client structures, companies, trusts, partnerships, and their interrelationships. Identify beneficial owners and controllers with a guided workflow that documents your reasoning at every step, even when information is difficult to obtain.

• • Map multi-layered corporate and trust structures
• • Identify beneficial owners using 25% ownership threshold tracking
• • Record controllers, trustees, directors, and appointors
• • Document reasoning when ownership information cannot be obtained

When cash receipts at or above the $10,000 TTR threshold come through your trust account, your team flags the transaction in duely and the structured TTR capture workflow opens, with all evidence linked back to the relevant matter.

• • TTR capture workflow for trust account cash receipts at threshold
• • Matter-linked transaction records for compliance evidence
• • Structured AUSTRAC-aligned TTR data capture
• • Evidence trails connecting trust account movements to specific matters

Generate tamper-evident evidence packs for any matter at any time. Every compliance decision, verification result, and risk assessment is captured in a versioned snapshot, with role-based Standard and AMLCO-only Sensitive profiles.

• • Versioned evidence packs with per-version SHA-256 integrity hashing
• • Two profiles by role: Standard (default) and AMLCO-only Sensitive
• • Complete decision trail: decision, rationale, timestamp, and approver
• • Export-ready snapshots for regulatory review or internal audit

An AML/CTF disclosure obligation and a client's privilege can point in different directions, and AUSTRAC's legal starter kit sets out three filing paths depending on how far privilege extends. duely puts that decision in front of the AMLCO as a structured assessment before any SMR can be submitted, then applies the path it produces, including the deadline and the AUSTRAC XML.

• • Privilege assessment required before SMR submission, with three outcomes: none, partly, or wholly privileged
• • Filing path applied automatically: standard SMR 3 business days from suspicion; LPP form in lieu alongside the SMR, which extends that to 5 business days; or neither filed, with the decision retained
• • Terrorism financing stays at 24 hours whatever the privilege position, so the deadline comes from the offence classification and the assessment outcome together, never one flat rule
• • The lppFlag in your AUSTRAC XML is derived from the assessment, never assumed, and export is refused rather than producing a filing that contradicts your recorded decision
• • On by default for legal practices, and the completed assessment is frozen with the case so the record shows the decision as it stood at filing

Clients who were already receiving designated services when Tranche 2 commenced on 1 July 2026 get a structured transitional posture: risk-tiered treatment with documented deferral decisions, and full CDD triggered automatically when a defined trigger event occurs as the relationship evolves.

• • Transitional pre-commencement posture per customer
• • Risk-tiered treatment (low / medium / high) with documented rationale
• • Trigger events force full CDD when they occur (new service, material change, screening match, and more)
• • Posture and decisions flow into the evidence pack