Lynda ArtesaniLegal Accountant and Data Migration Specialist at The Proper Trust

Is Your Firm's Trust Account Really Balanced?

18 Aug 2023 · 1 min

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0:39

In this brief multi‑speaker excerpt, the participants discuss a striking discrepancy they have observed over five years of consulting with law firms. While every attorney they speak with claims that their trust account is "balanced," only one firm actually meets the strict compliance definition of a balanced trust account. The speakers emphasize that a balance shown in the bank or in QuickBooks does not equate to compliance‑level balance, highlighting a widespread misunderstanding within the legal industry.

I have a good question for Sarah.
All the attorneys we've talked to over these 5 years or so, how many of them tell you that their trust is balanced? All of them. And how many of them actually are balanced in compliance, the viewpoint of compliance?
We only had one.
Yes. We only had one out of all of them.
Seriously, that is a true, true statistic.
That is such a good point because they're going to right away, they're going to tell us So we'll take them on. Oh yeah, it's in balance. You know, it's usually—
but balanced in the bank with QuickBooks isn't the same as balanced for compliance.
Right.