Double grovel, toil and trouble

My bank has just bounced one of my client account cheques. Just a few words but the consequences are horrific. Why did they do this? In 31 years of practice no client account cheque of mine has ever been dishonoured. At the time that the cheque was not met I had in the region of one million pounds in the client account. So why was the bank behaving in this very curious fashion? We live in strange times but surely some things remain sacred?

The answer is of course bizarre. The cheque had been sent to a client before Christmas. They had promptly deposited it with their bank and, when it was due to be paid, my bank in its wisdom chose to telephone my office to confirm that I was happy for the cheque to be paid. When the bank did not get a reply they chose simply to dishonour the cheque. I should point out that the cheque was for £15,000 '“ not a dramatically large amount. We regularly write out cheques for far greater sums which the bank never rings up about, so quite why they chose that cheque to telephone us, I don't know.

Bad behaviour

When I rang my bank manager in something of a rage he muttered something about the signature not being right but, having obtained a copy of that same cheque, the signature was 100 per cent perfect and it seems that in those few days before Christmas and the New Year the bank is obviously staffed by people who do not fully understand the implications of their actions. Not surprising really, given the behaviour of our lending institutions leading up to the credit crunch.

My bank tends to ring me two or three times a year about transactions. I suspect it is because they have internal systems that demand that they do so, but they are normally very half-hearted calls and I don't understand why such a call should have been made on the 27 December when any bank manager in his right mind would have realised that solicitors are shutting up shop and there would be no one to talk to.

The sadness of this tale is that the bank manager to this day does not seem to have any true realisation of the consequences of dishonouring a client account cheque. He regards it as just one of those run-of-the-mill mistakes that sometimes occur. But the person who had the cheque dishonoured must have had that slight concern that there was something wrong with my client account.

A minor detail

The problem we have these days is that bank managers tend not to understand the profession. They do not understand that a good deal of solicitors' work is still done on trust and that the value of a solicitor's undertaking is considerable. They do not understand that solicitors' client account cheques are sacred and to dishonour one in the circumstances described above, while having considerable importance to myself, appears to be a matter of detail and little consequence to the bank.

Bank managers now exist in little more than name. There was a time when one had a manager that one could have lunch with and discuss the problems of practice. Now we have 'Area Relationship Managers' '“ nameless people in offices many miles away and a quite staggering turnover of personnel. They come, they go and quite where they disappear to, one never really finds out.