Scottish solicitors get simpler AML compliance process

The Law Society of Scotland has announced a significant simplification of its mandatory Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Certificate for 2026, reducing the data burden on member firms while maintaining rigorous supervisory standards.

The AML Certificate is a compulsory annual questionnaire for all Scottish law firms within the scope of the Money Laundering Regulations. It enables the Society to understand risk across the legal sector, gathering information on firms' services, products and clients as part of its statutory duty to apply a risk-based approach to AML oversight.

The revised 2025 certificate, covering business conducted across the 2025 calendar year, will concentrate on core information such as the scope of firms' work and confirmation of Beneficial Owners, Officers and Managers. Crucially, the opening of the submission period is moving from February to May 2026, to avoid overlap with the end of the UK financial year, which has historically created a clash of competing administrative demands for member firms.

Gemma Turnbull, Head of AML at the Law Society of Scotland, described the changes as a deliberate effort to ease the process while keeping the Society's intelligence gathering effective. She noted that most information requested in 2026 will already sit within firms' existing Practice-Wide Risk Assessments and Policies, Controls and Procedures, meaning the workload should be considerably lighter in practice.

The announcement reflects a broader pattern across UK professional bodies of reviewing how compliance obligations are designed and timed, with a view to making them proportionate to risk and operationally workable for member firms of all sizes.