Identity verification for law firms

Client identification is a standing obligation for many Canadian law firms, not a one-time courtesy. This guide describes how identity verification fits into that work at a practical level. It is not legal advice: your Client Identification Procedures (CIP) and your obligations under FINTRAC and your Law Society's rules are questions for your own counsel and your firm's compliance officer.

The context, in plain terms

Law firms handling certain financial transactions face client identification requirements referenced by FINTRAC and by provincial Law Societies (in Ontario, for example, under the Law Society's by-laws). Historically, that meant an in-person meeting and a photocopied ID. Remote client verification — confirming identity without a meeting — is increasingly common, but the underlying obligation to actually verify the client, and to document how you did it, does not go away just because the meeting moved online.

Where identity verification fits

ShieldID reads a government-issued ID front and back — driver's licence, passport, permanent-resident card or provincial ID — cross-checks the barcode or passport MRZ against the printed fields, and matches a live selfie to the document photo through a guided liveness challenge. The output is a set of per-field verdicts and evidence, not a single accept or reject decision: your firm still makes the identification determination, informed by what the checks found, exactly as it would review a photocopy today, only with more signal behind it.

• A document check that reads and cross-checks the ID rather than eyeballing a scan.
• A liveness challenge and face match, so the client is confirmed to be present, not just a photo of an ID on its own.
• A record of the check, entered in the Activity Ledger when accessed through a Trust Ledger integration — Coming soon for a standalone ShieldID API account — that you can point to later if the identification is questioned.
• English and French support for client-facing verification, since a firm's clients are not always English speakers.

What we do not claim

ShieldID does not determine whether your specific identification method satisfies your Law Society's by-laws or FINTRAC's requirements for a given matter — that determination belongs to your firm and its own legal judgment. We also do not hold a certification stating the product is "FINTRAC-approved" or similarly badged; no vendor certification of that kind exists to hold. What the product can do is give you a documented, repeatable check and a record of it, which is useful input to a decision your firm still makes and remains responsible for.

Getting started

A sandbox session, never billed, lets your firm see exactly what the applicant experiences and what the result looks like before it touches a real file. From there, a hosted verification link can be sent to a client the same way you'd send a document for e-signature.