Are personal injury matters captured as designated services?
No, personal injury work is legal dispute resolution and sits outside the designated services.
Personal injury work - running negligence claims, motor vehicle injury matters, workers' compensation, medical negligence - sits outside the designated services in Table 6 of the AML/CTF Act. These matters are legal dispute resolution; they don't "directly advance" a real estate transfer, body-corporate restructure, equity/debt financing or other regulated transaction.
The same logic AUSTRAC applies to family law dispute resolution applies here: drafting documents, providing advice and conducting litigation to resolve a legal question are not, by themselves, designated services even if a payout eventually changes hands.
A practice that only does personal injury work isn't captured. The risk is firms with mixed practices - e.g. a personal-injury firm that also assists with trust structuring, property purchases for the settlement amount, or estate planning. Those adjacent services may be captured even though the underlying personal injury work isn't.
See AUSTRAC's Professional designated services page.
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