Learn how to write a job ad for a legal bookkeeper and where to post it. Include specific responsibilities like IOLTA account management and trust accounting, require experience with Clio or LeanLaw, and post on legal boards like LawCrossing and ALA sites plus LinkedIn and Indeed. Expect 3 to 4 years before a new hire works independently.
Chapters
This is the last video in this series of hiring and knowing when to hire and what's it gonna cost. And now we're gonna really dig down into creating the ad and what you should have in the ad when you produce an ad for an accounting job. I think this is important also where we post the ad, 'cause there's lots of opportunities, lots of places. You just don't wanna go too crazy 'cause you're gonna end up making it harder on yourself. So if you're looking to hire a legal bookkeeper, you want to make sure that it's not just a generic ad. You don't want to just go ChatGPT a bookkeeping position because there's a lot more to it when we're talking about a legal bookkeeper. I think law firm bookkeeping has its own unique accounting needs, and handling the trust is such a big piece of it. Never mind the cost, the advanced client costs and things like that, ensuring compliance. So big. You need to have someone who's very good with their skills and very detail-oriented. One of the things I can recommend is that you want to come up with an eye-catching, compelling, attention-grabbing title to get the person's attention. 'Cause there's a lot of competition out there. It's still an employee's market as opposed to an employer's, kind of like the housing market right now. It's a buyer's market and not a seller's market. So you wanna kick things off with a real clear title. Experienced legal bookkeeper wanted in an accounting firm that specializes with Working with attorneys. Something simple like that instantly signals what you're looking for in the person. They don't have to dig deep and read. Remember, people only have a 1, a 5-second attention span. So knowing that you need to really grab them with the, right with the heading. And then give a brief, brief firm introduction. Give a very short, sweet couple of lines to tell them what you do and what you love about your company and what your firm's really what sets your firm apart from other firms. Maybe you're a growing accounting practice and you specialize with working with law firms and committed to excellent client service and ethical standards. That tells a client a lot, a potential employee a lot in just that couple of, that sentence. And that's important to, like I said, they don't take a lot of time to read. Hopefully they do if they're very good with detail, but you wanna grab their attention and do that quickly to give them an idea of the company. They're gonna look you up anyway. So know that part of it. And then you wanna highlight the tasks that are unique to legal bookkeeping, such as managing client trust accounts, IOLTA accounts, processing retainers and settlement funds if you work with personal injury or contingency lawyers, preparing reports for attorneys and audits, and are they proficient in Clio? Things like that. Handling accounts payable, accounts receivable, reconciliations. Those are important tasks. You want to really drill down to industry-specific qualifications. Experience with legal accounting software. Maybe it's LeanLaw, Clio, whatever the software that your firm has for the majority of your clients. You want to make sure that the person that you're working with has at least experience working in that product. It's going to save you a lot of training time. Have the person— if you're going to pay the higher rates, make sure they have familiarity with trust accounting rules and compliance. If you work primarily in one state, they should know that state inside and out. Ask them in the interview, like, Where would you go to find out the rules if you're a cloud accountant and you're working with somebody in Iowa? Where do I know the rules from the Iowa bar? So they should know the answer to that. And then make sure they understand the confidentiality level of the work, and then also the firm's ethics and the ethics of the team member that you're looking for. Then you want to talk about the benefits and application instructions so they know where to go if this seems like it fits them, just reading that little bit about your firm. And then you put an ad in and then you could just write legal bookkeeper position at Artesani Accounting. Join our team, respected accounting practice serving whatever practice areas that your firm does. And we seek a bookkeeper with legal industry experience to manage our financial— manage financial records and trust accounts. And then go into those details. You want how many years experience in bookkeeping, you want experience in the legal software. How many years do you want, or at least that they have that working knowledge of trust accounting rules and make sure they are discreet with the, with data, which you could actually formulate some of a, somewhat of a test to test that. Give 'em a scenario and then you can have ChatGPT or any of the AI help you with creating an employment test so they can, you can see their working knowledge of the job that at hand that you're trying to hire for. And where do you post this job? There's legal-specific boards, so you can actually— job boards. You can go to LawCrossing, Legal Steps. This is more for law firms. The ALA has a place for that as well. You can go to LinkedIn. A lot of our, a lot of my colleagues do very well on LinkedIn. Indeed. You can do Glassdoor. There's a lot of accounting job boards. You could go to Robert Half or The Mom Project's great too. We've got one of our best employees on The Mom Mom Project. You can actually go to the state bar and post on some of the state bars. You could do that as well. Know that legal accounting or legal bookkeeping positions are in high demand and it's hard to find people. If you go back to that first video that I did on this particular topic on, on August 4th, you'll see that there's not a lot of us out there and you may have to train from the ground up, but it might be worth your while to do. We've been very successful with that, with people that have come outta the firm that really don't have a lot of even bookkeeping knowledge is weak and they've really excelled, but it takes 3 to 4 years for them to really fully excel and work independently. So know that it's a, not an instant thing. Make sure that you have a tailored job ad. Test it out with some of your friends to see what they think of the ad. They might add their two cents, put it on a Google Form, a Google Doc, and let them add their two cents. They'll be reading it completely foreign of knowing what you know and see if you're— Yeah. Really giving the person and explaining to the person exactly what you're looking for in a clear way. There's a lot of clarity in that application, application, the ad that you put out. So make sure that you set it up for success right from the get-go, that there's no ambiguity or unclearness in the ad. So you get good candidates. Just like when I do these articles and I do these videos, Sometimes I direct them and I try to direct them to certain people, and sometimes it just doesn't— it falls flat. So you want to make sure that you have that person in mind, what you're looking for when you hire, and tailor that job ad around that person. I hope that's helpful, and we'll see you all next week. Bye now. Bye.
