The Reports Every Attorney Needs to Run a More Profitable Law Firm (And How LeanLaw Delivers Them)

Welcome back, everyone. Whether you're a legal bookkeeper supporting law firms or an attorney running their own practice, you already know this truth. Winning cases— is only half the battle. The numbers just have to match. That's where working with a legal bookkeeper is so important. Most attorneys didn't go to law school to become financial analysts, but the reality is that strong reporting is going to help their firm thrive more so over a struggling firm that doesn't really track anything, that just puts their head down and works in the files. So if you have late invoices or murky trust balances, this is where your legal accounting team is going to come in. And you really wanna look at maybe having the bookkeeper check for any surprise cash flow problems that could come into play. That can happen as well. So that's exactly where LeanLaw shines. It's powerful, it's easy to use, has reporting tools that are tightly integrated with QuickBooks Online that give attorneys and bookkeepers clear real-time insights without needing a finance degree. That's the beauty of it. So in this video, I'm going to break down the most important reports reports that every attorney and legal bookkeeper should be running regularly, what they reveal, and how to turn them into action. So let's dive in. Law firms have a unique challenge. Revenue is invisible until it's billed. You can work 60 hours in a week and still collect $0 if that time isn't tracked and it's not invoiced and followed up on. Good reporting is gonna close those gaps. And it shows exactly what you've earned, what you've billed, what you've collected, and what's still at risk. It highlights which clients and matters are profitable and which ones are quietly draining the resources. Most importantly, strong reporting is going to keep you compliant in your trust accounting and keep you regular with your trust accounting rules. LeanLaw makes these reports accessible, accurate, and actually— Mm-hmm. Usable for busy attorneys. So let's get into the essential lien law reports. So here are my must-run reports. The Origination and Billing Attorney Report is important. This report in particular is gonna be broken down by who brought the client in, your originating attorney, and who did the work, the billing attorney. We always call 'em the worker bee at our firm. It answers who's the rainmaker, who bills the most hours, and it's essential for firms that are more than a solo, and they're looking for compensation, performance reviews, and deciding where to invest in growth. It's really an important report. The next one is the Unbilled Time and Expense Report. This lists all the time and expenses recorded but not yet invoiced. Unbilled time is money you've already earned, but you haven't collected. Run this weekly or monthly depending on your billing schedule. And you want to keep the pipeline moving and catch attorneys who delay their time entry. You can almost tell when I speak to the attorneys, which attorney are you having a problem with that's not doing their billing regularly or not billing out everything, or their billing is kind of low. The attorneys have that gut feeling. They know who's a low performer in the firm, but having the reports is really eye-opening for a lot of them. So the accounts receivable aging report, you can get this out of QuickBooks, but you can also get a view of this inside of LeanLaw. And it's organizing it by the age of the reports. 0 to 30, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, 90 days and plus. So you don't wanna see anything in the 90+ staying, but it's your cash flow pulse check. The older a receivable gets, the harder it is to collect. That's just a fact. So use this report to spot any slow-paying clients, tighten up the payment terms. It's really important to do that. Knowing which clients are slow payers, you might wanna get a little bit more upfront. However you can work it. So the Trust Account Ledger Report— obviously this has got a lot to do with trust compliance. It's a detailed history of every trust transaction by client and by matter. This is your audit-ready report for compliance, and you should run it monthly to stay on top of client funds. Know that if you ever do go through an audit, they will ask for certain reports, and they may have fillable PDFs. You might not be able to run the report and hand it over from LeanLaw. You might actually have to use their report. That's just a tip because I've seen it happen where bookkeepers get lazy and they just send the reports over out of the platform, out of QuickBooks, for example, and then they get in trouble with the bar because the bar wants them to fill out their old antique PDF fillable report. So know that you might have to do that. The 3-way trust reconciliation report. This compares the bank statement, the trust ledger, and the individual client trust balances. It's the gold standard of trust compliance. By most state bars. LeanLaw automates most of the heavy lifting here, especially because of the way it presents itself on the balance sheet. And you can really finish this task in minutes instead of hours. The Matter Profitability Report is very important. It's going to show revenue, time spent, and expenses on each individual matter. It's like your P&L on your client, right? Your little P&L mini report or your project report on your client. It reveals the truth. Every case is not profitable, unfortunately, and it will help you make smarter decisions about case intake, takes and, and fee structures and where you might be needing to adjust. A billing realization rate is one of my favorites. It is one of my favorite KPIs. It shows what percentage of recorded time actually gets billed versus written off. And attorneys like to write time off and it's money just gone, right? Time spent, money gone. So for example, if an attorney can record 100 hours but only will bill 75, that realization rate's 75%. This report's going to help you to understand write-downs, what can happen and how you can improve improve that rate. All law firms should be looking to improve that rate. And then revenue by practice area or client report. This is going to break down the practice areas. If your firm has different practice areas by type, and it's really your strategic planning tool, run it quarterly, see where the money's really coming from and where you can spot any growth opportunities or any vulnerabilities. And then you can turn these reports truly into action. So create these monthly or weekly reports. Have that open up the conversation with your client. If you're a legal bookkeeper, if you're the attorney, let this be your guide. Put those reports, get them ready, run the unbilled time report weekly, aging report weekly, stay on top of this stuff. Maybe monthly you're running that trust ledger and completing that 3-way bank reconciliation, and then quarterly run that revenue by practice area report. That's a good guide. You don't have to become a numbers expert. To use LeanLaw. You just need to get the right reports and be consistent and act on what they tell you. If you're not using LeanLaw reports yet, it's time to start. Your firm's profitability, its compliance is your long-term law firm success by depending on these reports. So if you have a chance, drop in your favorite report or any questions or comments about the reports. I'd love to hear about how you're using the data, especially in this day and age, to help your firm grow and become stronger. So if this video helped you, I'd love a thumbs up or subscribe so you don't miss out on any of the videos. Hit that little bell for more legal bookkeeping tips. Thank you so much for watching. And now go turn those reports into real results. Bye now.