Law Firm Bookkeeping 101: Choosing The Best Accountant for Your Firm

Many young attorneys prefer to go into a private law firm, where they can specialize in fields such as criminal defense, labor law, and international law. Others go the in-house route, serving as corporate counsel within a particular company—especially if they think that they would like to transition into business management. The “Big Four” is the nickname used to refer collectively to the four largest accounting firms in the U.S. Aside from auditing services, the Big Four offer tax law, strategy and management consulting, valuation, market research, assurance, and legal advisory services. Generate financial statements like cash flow, profit and loss, or balance sheets. The
lawyer must safeguard and segregate those assets from the lawyer’s personal,
business or other assets.

• Additionally, an accountant or bookkeeper can provide valuable advice and tips on how best to manage the books for a law firm.
• They also face tax-compliance issues at the state and federal levels and municipal taxes.
• Cash accounting recognizes revenues when cash is received, and expenses when they are paid.
• If you develop a habit of recording your timekeepers, your clients payments, your unbilled work and so on, you’ll be able to aggregate the data to get a clear picture of the financial health of your law firm.
• You are choosing to impact how you carry out your bookkeeping, tax filings, and more.

This system sorts all transactions into two categories, assets and liabilities. All transactions are then recorded in a ledger, which is a record of all financial transactions. If you’re not dealing with trust accounts, and just want to accept payments online or in-person, we recommend using Square.

What is a Law Firm Chart of Accounts?

The basis of good legal accounting always starts with a well-thought-out budget. A budget helps you set expectations regarding cash flow and expenses for the year, reducing the likelihood of missing a payment or bouncing a check. Your law firm will also be able to law firm bookkeeping set revenue benchmarks, which will help you determine if you are meeting your goals or need to adjust your business plan. There are many benefits to double-entry accounting, but the main one is that it provides an accurate record of all financial transactions.

• To fix it, you have to go over each transaction to make sure it was entered into your accounting system properly.
• [10] The “Check Register,” “Individual Client Ledger” and “Ledger for Bank Fees and Charges” required by paragraph (f)(1) are all chronological records of transactions.
• An accounting firm can work with you to develop a system that allows you to keep track of your billable hours and ensure that your invoices reach your clients on time.
• It provides for recording cash as revenue when your firm receives it.
• Your legal accountant will be unable to do their job effectively if your data is not kept up to date.

Bookkeeping happens first and relates to the administrative side of tracking your cash. One of the main things to look for in a bookkeeper is to find one who specializes in accounting for law firms. Without properly differentiating these accounts, your law firm is at risk of inaccurate bookkeeping, unorganized records, and failing to meet compliance requirements.

What are some best practices for law firm accounting?

Typically, there are 5 core categories consisting of assets, liabilities, owner’s equity, revenue, and expenses. 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, ensuring compliance, and staying organized. 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.

This begins by creating a comprehensive list of all your firm’s cash inflow and outflow items. The basis for Rule 1.15 is the lawyer’s fiduciary obligation to safeguard trust property, to segregate it from the lawyer’s own property, and to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Once you grasp these basic methods, we recommend bringing in an expert bookkeeper to help you keep the most accurate books.

Introduction to Financial Accounting

Whether you do the task yourself or outsource it to a pro, the goal is to make sure your books are accurate, up-to-date, and useful to you and your CPA. Once you’ve chosen an accountant to work with, use these questions to guide your initial conversation. If you’re serious about growing your business, you need to team up with a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) early on.

• Your bookkeeper goes into your accounting software regularly (at least weekly) and records all the money coming in and all the money going out so that it appears in the correct place.
• Once your business bank accounts are up and running, you should avoid mixing your personal and business finances.
• The rules of ethics vary by jurisdiction, but there are some fundamental similarities when accounting for law firms.
• This is doubly important when utilizing lawyers trust accounts / IOLTA retainers.
• With these details in mind, let’s take a deeper dive into law firm financial management and discuss the importance of accounting for lawyers.

If you are still inputting numbers manually, you are probably finding that it is leading to mistakes or duplicated data entry. These mistakes waste time, create mismatched records, create billing complications, and potentially compliance violations. Essentially, double-entry accounting is an excellent safeguard against errors. When using double-entry accounting, all financial transactions will get sorted into specific categories (assets, liabilities, or equity), then once sorted; the two sides should match each other. If proper attorney bookkeeping occurs, then the law firm can track what money is coming in and going out of your firm. It will be challenging to scale your growth without understanding the money coming in and out.

Accrual accounting gives you an idea of what income and expenses you have during a period of time, but doesn’t give a good picture of your actual cash flow. As a business owner, you’re required to keep your law firm compliant. You must follow the ethics regulations governing law firms in your area. A fundamental concept in accounting and bookkeeping, double-entry accounting states that all financial transactions have equal and opposite effects in two different accounts. The difference is, the interest earned in a lawyers’ trust account is directed to the state IOLTA board to be used toward advancing legal services and non-profits. Two core tasks of a legal bookkeeper include data entry and bank reconciliation.