MPRE Practice Test 2025 – All-in-One Guide to Master the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination

The term for a lawyer stealing funds from a client trust account is best described as embezzlement. This is a specific type of theft that involves the misappropriation of funds entrusted to a person’s care. In the context of a lawyer-client relationship, when a lawyer takes money from a client trust account for personal use, it constitutes embezzlement because the lawyer has been granted access to those funds under the expectation that they will be held in trust for the client.

While terms such as theft or fraud may relate to similar activities, they do not capture the specific nature of the wrongdoing in the context of legal ethics. Misappropriation is closely associated with embezzlement and is often used interchangeably in legal contexts, but embezzlement carries more precise legal implications regarding the unlawful taking of funds from a trust. Therefore, embezzlement is the most accurate and suitable term for describing this unethical conduct by a lawyer regarding client funds.