AUSTRAC Tranche 2 for Lawyers and Conveyancers: Complete Compliance Guide (2026)

From 1 July 2026, Australian law firms and conveyancers providing designated services become reporting entities under the AML/CTF Act. This is the most significant change to legal profession regulation in Australia since the introduction of the uniform Legal Profession Acts — bringing lawyers into the same compliance framework as banks for the first time.

This guide explains exactly which legal services are captured, what your obligations are, how CDD works for legal clients (including companies and trusts), and how to build your program.

Which Legal Services Are Captured?

The AML/CTF Act captures firms providing designated services. For law firms and conveyancers, these include:

• Real property transactions: Acting on the purchase or sale of real estate on behalf of a client — the core service of most conveyancers and a significant portion of solicitor work
• Managing client funds or assets: Holding money in a trust account, managing investments, or controlling assets on a client's behalf
• Company and trust formation: Creating, operating, or managing companies, trusts, foundations, or similar legal arrangements
• Nominee arrangements: Acting as nominee shareholder, nominee director, or company secretary for a client
• Business acquisitions: Assisting a client in the purchase or sale of a company, trust or other body corporate or legal arrangement

Purely advisory services — general legal advice, legal opinions, litigation representation — are generally not captured, provided they do not directly advance a captured transaction (such as a property or company sale), involve managing client funds, or create or restructure legal structures.

Your 5 Core Compliance Obligations

1. Enrol with AUSTRAC

All law firms and conveyancers providing designated services must create an AUSTRAC Online account and enrol by 29 July 2026. You must also nominate an AML/CTF Compliance Officer — a senior person with responsibility for overseeing the compliance program — and notify AUSTRAC of their details by 29 July 2026 or within 14 days of enrolment, whichever is later. For small firms, the principal solicitor or sole practitioner typically serves in this role.

2. Adopt a Written AML/CTF Program

Your program must be in place and operational from 1 July 2026. It must be tailored to the specific risks of your practice — not a generic template — and must cover CDD procedures, ECDD for high-risk clients, ongoing monitoring, staff training, reporting obligations, and record-keeping. The program must be formally adopted by senior management and kept current.

For law firms, the program should specifically address: how the firm identifies and manages conflicts between professional privilege obligations and AML/CTF reporting duties (particularly around the SMR tipping-off prohibition), and how CDD will be integrated into the client intake process without creating undue friction.

3. Conduct Customer Due Diligence

CDD must be completed before providing any designated service. For legal practices, this means integrating identity verification and screening into your client onboarding workflow. CDD requirements differ by entity type:

Individual clients

Collect full name, date of birth, and residential address. Verify at least one data point against a reliable and independent source — electronic verification against reliable, independent data (such as a government document check), combined with a step that matches the person to their ID, is the usual approach.

Companies

Identify the company (name, ACN/ABN, registered address), verify its registration via ASIC, identify all directors, and identify beneficial owners — individuals who directly or indirectly own or control 25% or more of the company. Verify the identity of beneficial owners who are natural persons.

Trusts

Identify the trust (trust name, trustee details, type of trust), verify the trustee's identity (individual or corporate trustee), identify the settlor, and identify all beneficiaries who have a vested entitlement or who individually benefit significantly. For discretionary trusts with a wide class of beneficiaries, you must identify the class and document why individual beneficiary verification is not yet required.

SMSFs

Treat as a trust. Identify the SMSF trustee (individual or corporate), verify the trustee's identity, and identify all members. SMSF structures are common in property transactions — ensure your workflow handles them specifically.

4. VOI for Conveyancers

Conveyancers have a separate but complementary obligation under the ARNECC Model Participation Rules to take reasonable steps to verify a client's identity (VOI) in electronic conveyancing — and to keep the supporting evidence for at least seven years from lodgment. AUSTRAC CDD and VOI checks can be run in a single workflow, avoiding duplicate processes. Check how any AML platform you use supports your VOI obligations — not all do.

5. Report Suspicious Matters

Law firms and conveyancers must lodge an SMR with AUSTRAC when they suspect, on reasonable grounds, that a transaction involves money laundering, terrorism financing, or another serious offence. Critical for legal practitioners: the tipping-off prohibition means you cannot disclose to the client that you have filed or are considering filing an SMR — and you cannot allow your behaviour toward the client to signal this. This creates a tension with professional duties of candour that must be carefully managed and documented in your program.

Common red flags in legal practice include: unexplained sources of funds for property purchases, clients who resist providing identity documentation, structures that appear designed to obscure beneficial ownership, and transactions with high-risk jurisdiction links.

Professional Privilege and the SMR Obligation

Australian law provides a professional privilege exemption: a lawyer is not required to include in an SMR information that is protected by legal professional privilege. However, the privilege exemption is narrow — it applies to confidential communications made for the purpose of legal advice, not to all information a lawyer obtains in the course of a retainer. Your AML/CTF Program should include a specific procedure for assessing whether privilege applies before deciding whether to report.

Record-Keeping and the 7-Year Rule

All CDD records, transaction records, risk assessments, and compliance program documents must be retained for 7 years and must be producible to AUSTRAC on request. For conveyancers, this aligns with existing land transaction record-keeping obligations in most states.