I think, in fairness, it's not so much framed as obligations in the constating legislation, but more as the powers that law societies have to share information. Of course, they are bound by privacy laws and so forth, and because they enter into the sphere of privilege, when they investigate a lawyer, which is say that privilege is not waived or lost when the law society conducts an investigation, they have some obligations. They have an absolute legal obligation to protect solicitor–client privilege.
However, they all also have the power to share information with law enforcement agencies, and they do so. Individual law societies have different policies as to when that is. I would note with some interest, however, that in our inquiries to the law societies, we've discovered that reports of suspicion of criminal activity often may be for something like mortgage fraud. So it's not restricted to money laundering activities and does not necessarily meet with any enthusiasm on the part of law enforcement to investigate. Indeed, sometimes what the regulators are told is, “Well, you acted, you've suspended or disbarred the member; we have compensation funds and insurance funds that compensate the victims of these things”, so it is not unusual for there to be no further law enforcement action even where there is a report.
The other thing that I think needs to be said is that law societies are looking at compliance with their rules. Of course when they, for example, audit a law firm, they look at the accounting records and they are looking for breaches of the no-cash rules. They are looking for things that don't look right to them, but they are also looking in a broader context, so it's not always about crimes. It's often about failure to obey the regulations of the law societies.