In this presentation, the speaker addresses the common objection from cost‑conscious attorneys who prefer to rely solely on QuickBooks Online for invoicing and accounting. The talk outlines why general‑purpose accounting software falls short for law firms, emphasizing the unique demands of legal bookkeeping such as accurate time capture, trust‑account compliance, and integrated payment processing. Using data from the 2023 Clio Legal Trends Report, the speaker quantifies the benefits of dedicated legal billing platforms—showing a 34% increase in billable hours captured, up to 45% faster client payments, and potential revenue gains of 60% when automation is employed. A cost‑benefit analysis compares subscription fees for tools like LeanLaw ($65/user/month) and Clio ($49–$89/month) against the lost revenue from missed billable time, illustrating that the software pays for itself. The narrative also differentiates practice‑management suites (Clio) from billing‑only solutions (LeanLaw), discusses the learning curve versus the complexity of customizing QuickBooks for trust accounting, and recommends a demo‑first approach to let attorneys experience the workflow improvements. Throughout, the speaker stresses professionalism, risk mitigation, and long‑term investment value, concluding with a call to action to set up a software demonstration.
Chapters
This article is truly an article that I— it came in my head after one of our Law Lab sessions where we were discussing different software and the Law Lab member was like, can't I just use QuickBooks Online? Why do we have to invest in the software? This is a question that my clients ask me and I know why, I just don't know how to answer the question. Questions. So in the article that's attached here, and I'm going to kind of read it a little bit verbatim, this is something that's going to come up when you talk to attorneys, and you're going to find the attorney here and there that are like, "Yeah, I don't want to spend the money on any more software." And then you have to convince them why the software is necessary. So I really wrote this, and I called it "Convincing a Frugal Attorney Why Legal Billing Software Is Worth the Investment." And you know, it's not to diss on the attorney. The attorneys, there's a lot of attorneys out there that are very conscious of spending, which is not a bad thing, but sometimes you have to let them understand why it's a good thing to lay out the money and why there's a bonus to that. So most attorneys didn't get into law to start to manage money. That's not their goal. And it's really what we are there to help them with. And when they start to think about spending money on billing software, some of them kind of freak out, like, why can't QuickBooks just do this? Why do I have to spend money on Clio or LeanLaw or, you know, insert name of software? Why do I have to spend more money on that? And you have to let them understand that using the software is going to save countless hours, eliminate manual processes, and anytime you have manual processes, it's ripe with an opportunity to forget a step or make a mistake. So you're gonna get more accuracy in your records. Professionalism too. You're gonna see the professionalism leap up because you're gonna have a better, more professional looking invoice. But also it's gonna help all those involved in the billing process as well. And it's gonna help with compliance. So those are big. You're not gonna be able to give back more money in trust than was received. That's a big one. You're gonna put bumpers on that amount of money that's in there. So I recently had a conversation with an attorney that went a little bit like this. So this is the conversation and the answers that I gave, and hopefully it will help you because this is very close to a typical— a very recent conversation that I did have with an attorney about why the software is necessary. So we're going to call the attorney Emily. So Emily says, QuickBooks Online handles my invoicing and accounting just fine. I've been doing this on my own for a while, and I know I need you to work with me. But why do I need another software? Isn't that just another expense? And my answer back was, I get it, Emily. QuickBooks Online is an excellent general accounting software. It's tracking your income, it's tracking your expenses, and it's running reports. However, it's not designed to meet the unique demands of a law firm. Legal bookkeeping goes beyond sending invoices. It's about capturing that billable time and managing the trust accounts to stay compliant. With state bar rules. It helps us to streamline workflows and avoid manual data entry into QuickBooks. On its own, it can't do any of that efficiently. It's not built for that. It's built for all kinds of firms, not just specifically legal. So know that they're gonna be able to capture their time without missing it. That's money right there that they're not gonna miss time because they're doing it with QuickBooks and capturing it with a timer. It's really not efficient and it's a really poor way to do the work. So the Legal Trends Report in 2023, the Clio Legal Trends Report, said that attorneys capture 35, 34% more billable hours when they use software. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's like one-third more. So know that that's important, that that's an extra. If they bill $300 an hour, they're gonna capture $20,400. That's gonna well pay for the software. That's just paying for it. It's not even gonna say about the time that you've saved. So Emily says to me next, Okay, but I'm really diligent about tracking my time. My trust accounting is a nightmare and I don't want to mess it up. And then my answer back is, well, trust accounting is a headache for every law firm, without a doubt, hands down, probably one of the biggest pain points for attorneys and keeps them up at night. But QuickBooks Online is not built for tracking trust accounting. It needs a lot of customization to get there. It's like 12 steps to be able to manage IOLTA accounts properly with creating the customer and the sub-customer and the IOLTA liability and the sub-liability. There's just so many steps. And then using a product or service in the, uh, in the list items. And then when you use the product and service, you have to make sure you do a journal entry to bring it down to the sub-level. You don't need to get in all those details with the client. You just have to tell them that it's very time-consuming and one single error can cause a problem with compliance with the bar. It's all you have to say. That will land in that client's brain really easily. So legal billing software like Clio or LeanLaw will simplify trust accounting in just a few clicks, and they integrate with QuickBooks Online. So you're gonna be synced in, you're not gonna miss any data. And it's going to ensure compliance with the state and the local bar, everybody. So it'll keep you updated with the trust balances, the client deposits, the retainers coming in, the invoice payments. All of that can be done. And the invoice payments can actually get you paid faster if you use like LawPay or Confido Legal. It's important to note that there's a lot of time saved by automating, and that can lead to a lot of money annually by reducing administrative staff time by using the software. And then Emily goes, well, that sounds nice, but I'm not thrilled about adding another cost. How does this actually save me money? And that's when you start to get into the biggest savings. If they start to use a Confido Legal, it's going to save them money with getting paid faster and getting paid at all. A lot of times attorneys just do the billing and they don't follow up, and then it just gets dropped. But people will pay a bill if there's a payment link. They pay a lot faster with a credit card than they do with cash. It's just a fact of life. Also, by using the software, you're gonna tackle things like flat fee billing or contingency fee billing, or maybe leads billing is a problem you have to do, take care of, and that's not easy if you don't have the software. You can customize your billing. You can use short codes and things like that to save time with not typing everything over and over and over again. You can do batch billing. Mm-hmm. You can do integrated payment processing. Clients pay online, speeds up the whole payment process. Faster payments will equal better cash flow, hands down. And software like LeanLaw can reduce production time of the staff so they can be doing something more important. So Emily still says back, "I'm still a little skeptical. QuickBooks Online is much cheaper than adding Clio to my system, and I don't want to learn a new system." I think sometimes when you go to answer that question to the attorney, you want to say, I know another subscription fee is gonna hit your budget. Bottom line, right? That's overhead. But if we crunch the numbers, LeanLaw starts at $65 per user per month, and Clio's around $49, but you would really be wanting— we'd be paying more like $89 for the software that most every single attorney uses. Nobody uses the $49. Just 10 billable hours a month that you're looking at saving, that's not a lot. If you're billing at $300 a month, that's $3,000 in lost revenue if you're not billing that time. The software is going to pay for itself in the long run. The learning curve really isn't that much. It might be a little bit more in Clio than LeanLaw. I've never even had attorneys really struggle with that though. When we get them into the software, both firms do a great job with teaching the attorneys how to do the work. And I've never had them come back and say, I don't really know how to do that in QuickBooks, in the software, in LeanLaw or Clio. I never see that. You want to ensure that they understand that yes, there's a little learning curve, but it's not that big. It's actually less than teaching somebody how to do all these steps in QuickBooks without the software. So Emily says, well, you've caught my attention. "but why not just get a practice management system instead?" And that's a good question. So a practice management system like Clio is great. It's gonna take care of tracking your clients. It's got built-in templates. It can track your case or matter all the way through with dates and deadlines. Why not have that? It's great. LeanLaw has— it's a billing platform, but then there's NetDocs and things that are added on that you could incorporate with it that works with it. It's just really what does the company need. If you're already in some kind of a system, then you only need LeanLaw if you don't need the practice management. But if you need the practice management, Clio's got it all baked in and it's all housed in one software. It works really well. Both of these software have been around a long time, so you don't have to worry about picking a software that's going to be gone tomorrow. So that's important. So I think sometimes in the all-in-ones, we get the questions on the all-in-ones, and the all-in-ones are okay. Clio One's too new right now. But if you go to like a Cosmolex, which is all-in-one, it's, you don't need QuickBooks. I mean, you don't need QuickBooks with it. It's just itself a program, but it's not a great program because it's very rigid and you need to find somebody who knows how to use that program. More people know how to use QuickBooks and can add the skill of the software to it than know Cosmolex. Cosmolex is a very rigid program. It's got its use purposes by certain people, but you really want to think twice about picking up something like that, that you're going to be really married to for everything. So I would say to Emily, bottom line, I know you're very careful with your budget and legal billing software is just an expense to you, but it's also an investment because it's going to save you time, capture more billable hours, and ensure that your trust accounting and the compliance— it's probably the biggest part of this— will get you paid and it will get you paid faster. Thank you. It's really what you want to do. It's— QuickBooks is an excellent accounting platform, but it's not designed for the complexities of the legal world. So you want to add those softwares on and then just start to software on, and then you just want to really back it up with some statistics that, you know, 34% more billable hours are captured. You might save $60,000 in time, which is reflected back. It's a case study that LeanLaw did. You might save that annually by automating your billing process. Putting it all out in the cloud, it's secure. You'll get 45% faster payments, improving your cash flow by using an automated system for invoicing, whether it's QuickBooks or merchant services like LeanLaw or— I'm sorry, like Confido Legal or LawPay. And 60% revenue increase if you're using the billing. Wow. Features. Those are important. So my last step would be to say, let me just set up a demo so you can take a look at it. You don't have to make a decision today, but at least get a look at seeing what it does. And then you arrange the demo with your client so that they can see how beneficial it is to have the software. I actually did a video a long time ago to walk somebody through the steps of not having software and doing the manual painful way of QuickBooks only. It's an old video. I don't even know if I'd be able to find it to put it in here, but it was effective when I was trying to really convince an attorney that it was the way to go to get the legal software. It was effective for him. So hopefully this helps you have the conversations. Really refer back to the article that's attached with this video because it's really important to add that, um, to get eyes on it to see the stats. And hopefully this will help you to have that conversation with the attorney. And we'll see you all next week. Bye now. Bye.
