Sad but true

I met a friend the other day, who was absolutely incandescent about the fact that her (new) solicitors had asked her to provide proof of her identity. "What about my opponent?" she kept asking, "They don’t ask her to prove who she is!"

I explained to her that most solicitors are obliged to do this now, we don’t particularly want to (all that extra administration) but if we innocently act for a client who is not who he says he is, and who is involved in money laundering, we can be jailed along with the client. She was unmoved by the prospect of innocent solicitors being jailed because of the shenanigans of their clients, but exclaimed "Oh what an untrusting world it is nowadays!". Well that’s true enough.