LeanLaw Features Every Legal Bookkeeper Must Know (Plus Mistakes to Avoid)

Hey everyone, welcome back. If you're a bookkeeper working with law firms, you already know that this isn't regular bookkeeping. There's trust accounts and compliance rules and workflows that can make it feel like you're learning a whole new language. The good news is once you have the right tools and you know how to use them, everything gets much, much easier. And today we're gonna dive into the must-know LeanLaw features that every legal bookkeeper should master, plus the common mistakes that can sometimes trip you up. So whether you're brand new to legal accounting or just new to LeanLaw, this video will help you work with confidence and avoid some costly errors. So let's get into it. First, let's cover features that you're going to probably use every single day. So there's going to be a matter ledger inside of LeanLaw, and every single case or matter in LeanLaw has its own dedicated ledger. And you'll see this in QuickBooks. If you've got QuickBooks connected, you're going to see this in the chart of accounts, that every matter created is going to have its own sub-liability account, and you'll have that little, almost like a mini check register there. It's its own dedicated register. And this is your one-stop view showing all the time entries, and you'll see it in LeanLaw as well. It's going to mirror that and all the expenses, the payments, the trust transactions for everything for that matter. So get in the habit of really pulling up the matter ledger report regularly. It gives you a complete financial story of any case at a glance. So the second area that you really want to look at is trust ledger reports. So LeanLaw makes trust accounting so much more manageable by really generating detailed trust ledger reports by client and by matter. Because sometimes some clients can have multiple matters, and these reports are gold for your monthly 3-way reconciliation and for compliance for any of the state bar audits. So just a little pro tip here. Make sure you block off time at the very end of the month to run these reports and save these reports. And with LeanLaw, unfortunately, you have to make sure you run this report right on the end of the month. So the very last day of the month, when you're ready to close it down and you're done for the day, run this report. That way you can make a report for the end of the month. It's not something that can be automated, but it's something that you want. Otherwise, you're gonna have to do it three-way whenever you happen to pull up the report. So it's best to pull that file down and have it ready. So LeanLaw will guide you through a clear billing sequence. And this is one of the things I really love about LeanLaw working as an outside firm is that the client will put in their trust entries and then they'll say, make a draft, make some draft invoices. So at the beginning of the month, I create the drafts. I let the client know drafts are ready. Then they go in and approve them, correct them, make their changes, tweak them. And then once they're in approval, Now I can process them, send them to the client, and then obviously I handle the receipt of payment. So even if you're not entering the time, and most of us bookkeepers don't, but in some law firms, the legal admin might be doing the bookkeeping work or paralegal might be, and then maybe you are entering time, but you need to know exactly where each invoice sits in this workflow so you can follow up on collections and keep the cash flow flowing in the firm. The other place you really want to focus on, and I find this a lot of times with law firms, is this kind of gets neglected, and that's looking at the accounts receivable dashboard. It's one of my favorite features because the AR dashboard will give you a quick visual overview of all the outstanding invoices broken down by client and matter. And this is in LeanLaw. It's an incredibly powerful tool for spotting collection issues and then helping the firm stay profitable. What I like about it is a lot of firms I've run into, the individual lawyers actually do their billing, they handle their billing, they handle following up on any bills that aren't paid, and then they kind of let that part go 'cause nobody wants to be the bad guy calling up a client saying, "How come you didn't pay?" if there's not enough money in trust, right? So it's important for us as the bookkeeper, the overseer of the records, to make sure that we're following up on these bills that aren't paid, and then we are helping track them. And then perhaps we're working with maybe an outside firm like Colebox to help get that money flowing in and collecting, or maybe we do it ourselves. We help the client. A lot of firms are very happy to offload collections to a bookkeeping firm. And we don't deal with these people, we don't face them, we're not in the firm. So it makes it a lot easier for us to say, this is company policy, we're following up, and you can start compiling a proper workflow for helping the firm collect. Work with the firms individually to see what they find is what they want in their firm with collections. Some are very gentle in their collecting and some are a little bit more aggressive depending on the practice area. So the next thing is the expense tracking. And truly I've seen it all when it comes to expense tracking. Attorneys often pay for fees upfront for their clients, like filing fees, expert witness fees, court reporting fees. All of that. And then with LeanLaw, we're able to track these by the matter and make sure that they're properly billed back. So you're going to tag it into advanced client cost in QuickBooks. LeanLaw is going to read that and it's going to put it up in the ready-to-bill section if it's got the matter name on it, so that when they do their billing, it's billed back to the client. So there's no missed expenses. I think that alone helps pay for the software because I think a lot of times attorneys look at paying for software, like, ah, can't we get away with not having software? No, in this case it's such a time saver, and not missing any expenses paid back is very important. So make sure you understand whether the law firm handles it as advanced client costs through the trust or just as receivables. And then getting this right is going to keep everything compliant and accurate. And that's really just the beginning. LeanLaw has tons of reporting options, which I will get into in a future video, and customizations. But mastering these few features are really going to help cover 80% of your daily work. So what are the mistakes to avoid as a new legal bookkeeper? I can tell you that the biggest do not do in legal accounting is even an accidental commingling of funds can create serious ethical and legal problems for the attorney. So LeanLaw is designed to prevent this with separate workflows. You still have the right to choose the correct transaction type every time. So really make sure that the software kind of locks you in and you know exactly how much money is available per client to be applied to a bill. So that's what the beauty of having legal tech software is. The next Thing I see that happens with law firms is time is of the essence, and a lot of times they have the admin doing the work or the paralegal, and everybody skips the three-way bank reconciliation. You don't want to skip this because if you get audited, it's a big job to replicate this, and you want to have that at your fingertips. So monthly trust reconciliation really isn't optional. It's an ethical requirement by most states. Put it on your calendar as a non-negotiable recurring task. Put it in your SOP, put it in your practice management tool. And LeanLaw is gonna make this easier, but you still have to do it. So make sure you don't skip this step. The other thing I'd like to bring up is ignoring unbilled time entries. Time that's been tracked but never billed is money left on the table. Get in the habit of running an unbilled time report at least once a month and flagging it and giving it to the billing attorney. I think sometimes that alone, it can just sit there over and over again, and you really want to bring it to the attorney's attention. Say, you've got all this unbilled time. What do you want to do with it? Maybe they just want to write it off, but then you need to explain to them exactly what happens when they write off that time and what that does to their numbers. Also, not understanding flat fee matters and how those work. Not everything is billed hourly with law firms. We're seeing more and more law firms going to flat fee billing, and they recognize the revenue differently. Often when certain milestones are hit or the matter's complete, that's when the billing happens. So make sure you know how each matter type is set up in LeanLaw so you can record everything correctly. Another mistake I see is forgetting to spot check the QuickBooks sync. So look to see if anything didn't synchronize over and if there's any issues on any of the transactions that are missing, which you will find if you're doing the reconciliations. But remember, LeanLaw and QuickBooks sync in real time. And you might've heard me mention last week that sometimes Clio is really slow at the sync, but LeanLaw is not. You refresh that screen and it's there, which is a real fantastic part of the program. But it's still good to practice regularly that you verify your invoices, you verify your payments, and especially the trust transactions are showing up correctly inside of QuickBooks. Legal bookkeeping definitely does have a learning curve, but LeanLaw is really built to make that curve as smooth as possible. When you get comfortable with the matter ledger, the trust reports, the billing workflow, the AR dashboard, and expense tracking, and also stay mindful of those common mistakes I just mentioned, you'll become an indispensable part of that law firm. And you're part of the law firm team. The most Successful firms aren't just powered by great attorneys. They're powered by the backup team of the paralegals, the admins, and the bookkeepers who truly understand the tools and the rules. You've got this. If you have any questions about any of these LeanLaw features or want help in a specific workflow, drop them in the comments below. I read every one and I'm happy to help. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe, hit the notification bell so you don't miss any Legal Bookkeeping Guides. Thank you for watching, and now go make that law firm finances run smoothly. Hey.