Accounting for Law Firms: A Guide Including Best Practices

law firm bookkeeping

Once you understand the basics, consider hiring an accountant, either as a contractor or as an employee. They can help level up your firm and make the legal accounting process even smoother by adding legal accounting and legal practice management software to your firm’s toolkit. Using legal technology can ease the workload of manual tasks while helping your firm meet its goals—avoiding errors, https://dodbuzz.com/running-law-firm-bookkeeping/ ensuring compliance, and staying organized. An accountant who specializes in accounting for law firms is beneficial. Your best bet is likely to hire both a legal bookkeeper and a legal accountant. This is because a professional legal bookkeeper and accountant can help you manage your firm’s revenue and ensure your firm’s financial transactions are handled ethically and accurately.

If they have to dig through your personal account to find the odd business transaction, you’re giving them extra unnecessary work and will be charged for it. Do your due diligence and make sure every dollar going into the trust account is supposed to be there. You should only ever charge your clients fees directly related to their account.

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They collect, analyze, and use financial information to plan for the future. With a legal accountant, you can be certain that your firm is compliant and is set to grow. MyCase helps increase accuracy and peace of mind by providing you with all financial data (billing, payments, expenses, banking) under a single platform. This feature also eliminates duplicated data entry or the hassle of reconciling accounts.

Legal bookkeepers manage your finances on a transaction-by-transaction level while ensuring the books are balanced. They take count of every transaction the firm makes, watching what money comes in and goes out. Law firm accounting can be a lengthy process, widely despised by attorneys and other legal professionals who’d instead be practicing law than crunching numbers. When implementing a legal accounting strategy in your firm, there is plenty to consider.

Read Our Tips on How to Set Up Back Office Functions the Right Way

Anyone who has started a business has been guilty of this mistake. Intermingling expenses isn’t a fatal mistake but it causes problems for your business when it comes to claiming expenses and tracking the financial health of your business. When you don’t collect funds that you’re owed, you miss out on revenue and are essentially working for free. And when you’re missing out on 12% of your billable hours, that’s 4.8 hours in a standard 40-hour workweek. Data entry errors lead to wasted time, as you comb through records to figure out what the error is, as well as billing complications and compliance violations in the worst cases. Not all income is revenue — this is a distinction that needs to be made or you could have to deal with inaccurate bookkeeping.

  • Having cash in your savings account can improve your chances of being approved for loans and other lines of credit in the future.
  • As an attorney, you’ll spend a lot of your time invoicing your clients.
  • This method does not recognize accounts receivable or accounts payable.
  • Accountants sometimes call this the “corporate veil,” and it’s what protects owners and their assets from any legal action taken against the company.
  • Your checking account is self-explanatory — its primary purpose is managing business revenue.
  • Every state has an IOLTA program, and it’s likely that the bank where you opened your regular business checking account also offers IOLTA accounts.

Whether you mismanage the accounts, put funds in the wrong account, accidentally use funds, or fail to report correctly, trust accounting errors are a big deal in accounting for law firms. Trust accounting mistakes can lead to penalties, suspension, or even losing the right to practice law. Law firm accounting software like MyCase, offers law practice management and accounting features in a single package, so all critical accounting information is current, compliant, and audit-ready.

Cheikh FAYE