Preventing Trust Account Mishaps: Best Practices

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge, hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone, and we're all just— we just connected before this recording and we're both all talking about how cold it is. Even here in Florida, it was down to 39 degrees this morning and I didn't really want to complain because I know, like, my daughter up in Rhode Island where I'm from, she's like, it's -2 and it's been snowing. And I'm like, yeah, no, okay, no thank you.

But, um, you got us beat still. We're, we're 37, so you're 30.

Oh, so by a little bit though. I shouldn't be— I should be not— I should be way ahead of you though. Although I think that the West Coast is in like a bit of a heat wave warm-up, and the middle of the country and the East Coast is Being slammed with cold weather, like the Arctic blast that comes down.

We woke up to snow and it's 29 degrees here.

So see all these mishaps that are happening around the country?

But you have, you have like sun all the time, so that helps. Like, it was not sunny and windy and I thought he was gonna die. And, you know, I brought him a coat and he made it through the other half of the match. But I was like, I was in the house, I had windows open, I was cooking, I was having a grand old time. And Then I put the dogs out. I'm like, oh no, what happened here? Then I thought about 'em and I sent 'em a text. I was like, oh yes, can you bring me a coat? But this week we actually got a listener on TikTok that had a question which kind of rolls into the topic of the day, which is preventing trust account mishaps, best practices. And the question was from a student. So this person was a student. How does somebody steal trust money? And It was actually a topic we were talking about on cybersecurity and things like that. So, Sarah, you want to kind of give it a go?

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, sadly, it's all too easy. It's all too easy because we put a lot of information out there in the world that says where the trust account is and how to access that trust account with all the information, the banking information. And unfortunately, Due to our day and age right now, it's— we're learning, and this is not something that we knew before an incident that we recently learned about, was how easy it is to hijack an email thread or a text thread and make it present as if it's that individual and have all of this information go back and forth. And you're thinking you're talking to that same person because in your mind, as the attorney or the client, Nothing has changed. Maybe the wording is slightly different. The tone is not them. So in our minds—

Emails them, right? So they actually steal that person's login.

Or texting. Like, how do you wire information? How are you going to send it, right? So in our minds, what we said— Lynda had a good point. Always just do a test of like a dollar. That's one thing, a way to test to ensure, did you receive it? Let's have confirmation. And the other thing thing is to physically be on the phone with the individual that you're trying to either send the money to or vice versa if you're going to do it in the wire kind of platform.

So, and a dollar— the dollar trick would work except if you're communicating with the bad people and you say, did you get the dollar? They're gonna go, yep, and then you're gonna send the rest of the money to them. So that won't really work. It works if you're just connecting for the first time with somebody. I mean, I've used it for Venmo. gonna pay for my haircut or whatever. And I'm like, here, you know, here's my— did you get the dollar? And they stand there saying, yes. That's different. But physically calling and talking to the person is— and I know nobody likes to do that today, but that will help. Because there— this whole circumstance that happened to one of our, our clients is something that you would never think, you know, in this day and age. Like, you just— a lot of people get so— It's always when we've heard of these stories of these things happening, it's always when You know, the client is busy. They're trying to get the money out, and it's just— it's— we're all busy, and that's where it happens. And I think sometimes in cybersecurity is critical investment in your firm. If you don't have it, get somebody in there to do it and take care of it, because it's hard for us to be— we can't be everything. We can't be the HR specialist. We can't be— you know, we're a firm that does bookkeeping. All of us, we can't be the tax savvy person. We know what we know, but we don't spend our life just doing that because we're busy learning and doing what we need to do. And I think sometimes—

We don't practice law.

No, we don't practice law. We don't use the software, so we don't know. We know, we know our side of the software, but we kind of know it because we, we stick to just 2. But we, we can't tell you everything you want to know about PracticePanther. We don't use it. We don't encourage it. its use in our firm. You need to find somebody that, that uses that software, that's a, that's a pro at it. That's the same kind of thing. What do you think, Steve?

Well, I want to toss in there a real-life experience, and thank you to Denson from TikTok for, for your question. A couple things. One, uh, to, to play off of what you were just saying, Lynda, before I do the real-life scenario, um, contacting the bank, getting a hold of your banker who oversees your trust account— not customer service at the bank, but the actual banker— and say to them, can you tell me, are Routing numbers correct? Is this a legitimate bank? Is this, you know, what can you tell me about this? And they might say, oh, it's a bank.

To the receiving bank.

Right, the receiving bank. And what, what can they see from their end? And how long, you know, should we expect before these funds clear? And what, what can we do to protect them? Because they are our ally in the bank. So I think that's hugely important. Number 2, um, I actually had a scenario where a client emailed a trust check, a copy of a trust check. I wrote this— I hate that. I do too. And they got, they got dinged for $10,000 in fraud and they had to make up that money, um, themselves. And it was in a very ugly situation and he felt horrible about it. And that's huge. Yeah, it's still a big problem.

On that point, Steve, if we could stay on that point.

Sure.

That is actually still a method, and it is a current method that some larger insurance carriers and other types of businesses are using, and they're utilizing it through a different means of things. Like, it's either mailed and it has options, you have to read all of the fine print, or it's an email with a secure link. And then from there, none of which to me feels as secure, you know, as like a physical. I agree. But there is— Well, I think there is something about the, the thing about validation, like you're saying, and Linda was talking about calling. Um, you know, I'll be honest with you, I don't get it. It's as simple as writing a text, is picking up the phone and just hearing that person's voice to validate, especially when you have a document on the hook.

You're afraid of it though, Sarah. It's like the— I don't know if it's just the next generation down. Nobody wants to have like a contact with people. I think we are We are all, all, all of us are of the age where we used to sit with people for personal contact and picking up a phone isn't a big deal. But for some reason, it seems to be a thing that they, you know, oh, all right, going to make me use the phone. And then also, I'm guilty as anybody. I don't answer it. So.

Yeah. Well, I think if you're— to Steve, to your point, if you are trying to validate things, you have a lot of resources, like you said, Contacting your banker to validate stuff. I can't tell you how many times you receive— it's as simple as receiving— it happens with banks, your trust account with your escrow, your overpayment on your credit card. This actually happened to somebody I know where they got a check, they paid a credit card, it was an overpayment, or it went— it was through their bill pay.

Mm-hmm.

And the information came from a different institution. None of which made sense, and it was just as confusing.

So, um, well, you know, the other thing, the other thing too, I'm gonna jump in here, is if you're an attorney with a trust account, really strongly consider— because we don't see this a lot still— strongly consider using a cloud-based server with strong bank-level security so that not only is your email Password, you know, the document on the email is password protected, but it also gets encrypted when it goes— use your VPN, it gets encrypted on its way to the cloud server. It runs through there and it's encrypted. And it, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of hoops for it to jump through to avoid fraud. Yeah, that's huge.

Yeah, I'm— I don't want to know. I'm afraid to know. I want to be the ostrich that puts my head in the sand. But how much fraud has increased? In the last maybe 24 months, because a 2-year trend, I'm presuming it's, it's rancid. And I will say that even, even the protocols that we have, that the measures we're taking in our practice are still practical protocols to take.

Mm-hmm.

So I know the topic is about the mishaps of trust and how to prevent them. And I think it talks about like Kind of the differentiating factors of the different bank accounts and some of the things that we're, we're seeing. No matter what, Lynda and I, I mean, we knew this, but we got further confirmation in, in a meeting we had last week. No matter what, that trust account, money in, money out, has a compliance factor to the law firm. You choose to put the money in, you choose to take the money out. You better have a name, a reason, and details supporting where that movement is from. And if it's a fraud moment, that's a really hard thing to do, but you've got to put it on there, especially if the fraud moment creates a negative balance in your bank account. That's an automatic reporting to the Trust Compliance, and right there you're going to have at minimum a paper audit of some sort. Or some sort of validation of what happened here, and you have to describe the details. So I don't know. I mean, there's plenty on here to talk about. I'm sure you guys could list out a few more, but it just feels very scary at this day and age. Yeah.

Some of the pitfalls are, you know, putting your own money into the trust account. You know, that's commingling of funds. You don't want to do that. Some states And municipalities that oversee trust money do allow for a cushion in there in the event that there are overwire fees or something like that. However, they just took that away in our state. So you can't even have a cushion in there.

Yeah.

What was the reasoning behind that? Do you know?

I don't know. I didn't get the answer on that. I was just teaching this class last week at the Bar Association, and the person from the regulatory counsel came in and was telling us about it. But you want to be really careful with that because don't just go to a friend that happens to be attorney, an attorney down the street, and say, who are you banking with? And just hop into that bank. Really investigate if your state has recommended trust account banks that they say, hey, these are, these are the better ones. Our state does that. And through the Colorado Legal Trust Account Fund, I'll just say Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is one of the top ones because they don't mess up the trust accounts, whereas some of the smaller ones and credit unions that people use will put the bank fees in there, and then they overdraw the account, and then they're reported to the regulatory agency. To your point, Sarah, and you want to be really careful about that.

Good point.

Also, when you're working with flat fees, if you are accepting a flat fee and the day the client pays you the money, you deposit all of it into the trust account. And then you've got to look at all the nuts and bolts of that particular case, because maybe there are medical settlements that are being handled as the process is going on, but they haven't been agreed to yet. So you shouldn't be dispersing funds right away, and then you come up short.

Good point.

Go ahead, Sarah. I see you tuning in on that one.

I was just going to say, Steve, what if you— what if you have— all right, so you're buying a check order for that. You know how these people still handwrite checks? When you buy a check order, um, do you automatically ask like how much is it and then make sure—

take it out of—

take—

so you have to move it out of operating to cover it before it happens?

That's correct. That's correct.

And then you're out of compliance there too.

No, they're not. They're not.

Okay, they're not.

There's no cushion there. That's— yeah, there's no cushion. It's, it's— but that's to my point where there's nobody—

that's never—

don't call customer service. Talk to your particular banker. They are your friend.

The problem is, it's hard to find a banker, especially if you start dealing with Bank of America and Chase. There's no banker. You have to make an appointment just to go in to do the, you know, $40,000. You got to go in because they won't do it on the app.

My response to that then, Lynda, is it's our responsibility to say to them, to the clients, you should use this bank or that bank. Go out, go out to the Bar Association in your state. where you're practicing, or tell them, you know, we as bookkeeping/accounting professionals can go take a look at the Kansas State Bar and see who their recommended banks are and say, you know what, you're really exposed with Chase Bank, but you could use the ABC Bank.

I'm surprised you're saying Wells Fargo is good because it's not good for anything usually. It's been the worst bank.

Man, it's one of the best ones now.

It's been the worst bank for like ethics as far as it goes for ethical purposes. for the way they did business. Wow.

Well, you're right, you're right, Lynda.

Remember how they do handle trust accounts well, and they don't really ever take it out of the wrong account, like with a wire fee.

Every once in a while I'll see a wire happen, but we can get on the horn right away with the personal banker and say, you have just violated the trust requirements for this attorney client of yours. You've jeopardized him. I'm really passionate about this.

I think I want to go back.

I— sure.

I agree with the— yeah, normally within your, your bars typically have that list. In every state there is some sort of list, whatever that list is. And it's great to look at and kind of go with where you're going to do business in that relationship.

Yeah.

But I want to go back to— I understand the whole you cannot have a cushion, so totally makes sense. And maybe it needs to be rephrased in that it's not a cushion in, in the sense of like to absorb everything.

Right.

The— just so I understand this, if you order checks, typically we see this, we've seen it both ways, we've all seen it. I'm not saying we're exempt from it here. If you're ordering checks, if you have a wire fee, and I've seen this happen where, no, the bank said it was going to come out of operating. Why is it coming out of trust? That is the very challenging thing because you have no control over that moment.

Yes.

So the whole point of that small— let's say, let's give it $100. Let's say you're permitted to have within the law firm's name inside this pooled bank account one account that literally is $100. And if it doesn't stay $100, that's fine, but it's for the sole purpose of this moment because At that point, when you look at it, you're— the bank is taking money from other people's— yeah, money that's not theirs. And yes, you do have to replenish it. So which gets into best practices for us, which is, are you mindful of what's going in and out of that bank? Are you reconciling monthly? And do you have a 3-way? I think, though, I don't disagree with like you can't hold a whole bunch, but my brain is saying—

The $250 or something.

How do you help yourself? Yeah. But again, I think maybe that goes back to Lynda. The thought is, after what we did last week, maybe that goes back to the thought is you know what's going in and out of that bank account within 24, 48 hours.

That's what we're here for.

Okay.

Yeah. So as I'm reasoning this out in my head, but I'm thinking about we work on it weekly, Sarah.

We do one day a week, Thursday. And let's say on Friday the wire feed comes out. And it's not till next Thursday, they're out of compliance, and there's no cushion in there. No, $250 is not a lot of money to leave in the space. I think the reasoning behind it is exactly what you're saying, that they— that the people— people abuse it, which we know. We know that.

We know which we've seen.

It's egregious, and we see it. We could see it in the lady's eyes last week. You could tell that that's something that they— they have a little— yeah, it's just something.

What do you think about this thought process, which I totally— I see it. When Steve's talking about flat fee, I mean, this has been—

Wanted to jump back to that. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's another thing, because flat fee, Steve, the way that we were in a couple years ago, we were in a session at a Clio conference and it was like a pre-session and this dialogue came up about flat fee and how most firms feel that flat fee negates that trust moment. But to your point, that is absolutely incorrect. It's not for the sake of negating it. So I guess the question I have is, does it make sense? You have it in trust, but if you feel like you're a firm that's going to do flat fee, maybe not on the norm, do you feel that— does it make sense to have a designated flat fee account?

That's just AR retainer like that?

Yeah, like similar. You treat it that way until So it's not— or does it go back into trust? I guess it depends on the jurisdiction.

Well, and you have to also have your fee agreement has to outline the benchmarks that make up that flat fee. Think about that. It has benchmarks and you cannot touch any amount of that trust money until you reach certain benchmarks. And then to protect yourself even further, you prepare a bill up to that amount of the benchmark. You show the trust activity on that bill so far, and you send it to the client and you say, we have just earned $5,000 of your $15,000 retainer. Boom, we're going to go ahead and take that and move into the next piece of this transaction. And that is good customer service. That is protecting the trust funds. That is showing if something goes south and they, they grieve the attorney, that shows reasonable effort that the attorney tried to work with them and all the accounting was correct.

Yeah, and then something we see too, because sometimes they're moving the money because it falls on the dates that they want to move, but maybe the work hasn't happened. That's Still stealing. You have to perform the work. You're taking money out of trust. You cannot do that.

Right.

And I've always wondered that when I see a client where they took in a trust, uh, trust deposit for, I don't know, $10,575, and boom, the next time they bill, it's $10,000. It is the exact amount that they just put in. And it makes me wonder, really, that you did exactly that amount of work? And maybe it is true that the case fully revolved, you know, evolved and And it gets processed fully, but it's just always, you see it like repetitive pattern of that all the time. It makes me wonder, is that really what you're doing, or are you just putting things into trust and then moving the money over every month to show it is earned?

I think, Lynda, to me, as I'm sitting here thinking about this flat fee conversation and what Steve's talking about, it goes back to the accounting and the bookkeeping. And let's be honest, you're an attorney, you're a firm owner, you're a practice of 2, you're a practice of 1, you're a practice of 10. You are— you as the firm owner, the residing person that opened the doors, should not be doing this work. First off, it is not your forte. But also, how do you instill the proper workflows? Which, to your point, Steve, I feel like this goes right into, I'm going to offer these billing styles. These are my engagements. And sometimes we ask, what is your contract? What is it?

What's your engagement letter say? Yes.

And then from there, we have to follow the pattern because you're right, there are times just on just PIs, firms.

Yeah.

You don't know what lien is out there sometimes. You don't— the advanced client cost sometimes can get screwed up because for some reason it got accidentally paid out of trust. But then it also, like, how do you reconcile that if you have an advanced client cost event and you haven't— you know, it does happen very easily. Mistakes happen. It's not because you're not intelligent, it's just because You're not tracking it in the same way that someone who comes at it with numbers—

Or not aware, right? You need a good workflow process, especially bookkeepers out there. You need a good workflow process when it comes to these kind of matters because you need to, like we just said about the— we kind of have to have eyes on the engagement letters so we understand what the agreement is between the law firm and the client, and then understanding that workflow as we go along because I think that we have to make sure, and it's a good place to step into your advisory role. Uh, maybe the firm takes in cash and all of a sudden these weird deposits show up and there's— they're just cash deposits. You want to know how's the law firm handling the cash because we're not in the office.

Exactly.

How is that being handled? Because that's an opportunity for fraud, right? I never liked handling cash in an office. I remember having a little cash box and petty cash Remember in the old days, Steve, with the paper?

Yeah.

Maybe Sarah too.

Yeah.

They used to sign a paper and you're dealing with change and reimbursing receipts. I never liked having it because I knew that if something went wrong, guess who they were going to come looking for? The one with the key, right? And it was just having good— that good workflow process because there are some firms that deal in cash, whether it's family law or immigration law, they deal with cash. And you have to have a steady workflow where there's multiple people monitoring it at this, you know, at the same time that you can keep safe workflow, that, that way everybody's protected because it's so easy to slip that money into your pocket if you need it. Right. And that's stealing. That's stealing. Our job is to understand what their client, the client's life is beyond that and how they handle and manage trust. I think that's important.

Okay. Well, let's play a game.

Okay. I was going to ask.

Go ahead, Sarah. I can wait.

Well, I was going to ask you on these billing moments, Steve, when you're thinking about these flat—

The benchmarks and—

The benchmarks and these errors that can occur. To Lynda's point, you really did make all of that money like the next day. You flat-feeted in, flat-feeted out.

Exactly.

So at what point do you— I mean, we're not in the business if we're not doing the billing. We're not going to sit here and scrutinize the billing. But at what point do you find ways that you help a firm get through these billing errors? I mean, because these billing errors will occur, especially if you're not in software.

Even if you are and you're in like LawPay and somebody didn't set up whatever it's called now, Monday Morning or whatever. If you set it up, you know, you set it up Wrong and you don't point it to the right bank accounts, there's a problem there. That's— there is a problem set up a certain way so that the money goes for trust only. The deposits, the full deposit goes in, the fee goes out of the other account. And that can be an error that could happen, that it's a best practice to make sure your, your software is set up properly. I think that's key. Having software is key for best practice.

Yeah. Yeah. Update it too. Like, we're not talking about desktop, friends. Desktop is gone. Yeah.

That's not quite gone. Gone yet, but it's dying its slow death.

Yeah. But like, okay, so that's it. That was one I was thinking of earlier, and I'm glad you brought that up. That was one idea I had. That's a billionaire snafu. Or they take the money, you know, like you said, you set it up wrong, you take the money in the wrong account. The evergreen moments tend to result, unfortunately, in confusion. And so money goes into the wrong account. And the bill gets paid, but then they double paid or—

Or they move the money out of the wrong bank because it went into one bank and they moved it out of the other. Yeah.

Yeah. Or you're not properly billing. You're not lining up to your point, Steve, to your engagement or however you set up your practice.

Correct. Yeah.

And you have to do the 3-way bank reconciliation every month, whether you like it or not. It's a job. It's an extra thing. If you're a bookkeeping firm out there, you have to charge for that. It's not a click and 1, 2 click. It's not just reconciling the bank account. There's more to it. And I think that that always gets lost too, that people think, oh, I reconciled. Yeah, I'm reconciled. They don't understand the 3-way part, which is the software.

Yeah.

The bank account, plus or minus anything's in transit, and then your, your QuickBooks, your liability account, what's in there and does it equal to the bank account? And I think sometimes Having that formalized process, not sometimes, all the time. It's important to have that process and it should be done. And I'll tell you, most of the people who come to us do not have that at all.

Yeah, well, I guess it's just going like to protect this mishaps of trust. It's talking— it isn't just talking about how the money goes in and out of the bank account so much. It's also— it sounds like from what Steve's saying, it's It's looking at the engagement and understanding the billing practices.

There's nothing wrong in asking for that engagement letter when you're the accountant, the accountant or bookkeeper. Yeah, that shows that you care and that you've got their back.

Yeah.

And then staff, you know, depending on the size of the firm, is having the proper staff training, which, um, that, that's not an easy thing to do sometimes because you have people who have up and quit in the middle. of, you know, distressed moments you have had. How do you spot mishaps within the firm, with the trust, with the employees themselves, with staff? How do you have proper protocols in place for that? Obviously, it's your name, it's your shingle, it's you.

You do not leave a signed blank trust check in your drawer and go on vacation until your Paralegal or whoever, when this money comes in, write this check, that's signed, do not do that.

Or the stamp, the stamp from hell with your signature that people need to sign. No, no, no, no, no, no.

What are the protocols to— Lynda and I had this conversation. What are the— sure, if your state has deemed protocols of when trust money gets in and disperses at time of settlement, what are the protocols around that? What is outlaid in the agreement? Okay, when your trust funds come in, If a case was awarded to you, this is how much time it takes for us to internally get this data together to ensure we're properly distributing it. We don't see that, of course, in boutique firms. They're just— their clients are hungry. They're quick to move the funds. Mistakes happen.

You really need to make sure it's in the bank, in your bank account fully before you start divvying it out.

Yeah. The other thing really quick, this happened a couple years ago in a demo— not in a demo, I'm sorry, in a class I was taking on trust accounting. Where it wasn't my state, it was just a general— because it did happen in a different state, and I don't know where— where a fraudulent check. So essentially what was happening was, I want to engage your services at the law firm level, right? And you're going to send a request for your retainer. Let's say your retainer is $50,000 because it's a big business thing, right? But the client's like, well, I'm going to send you $100,000.

That's wrong.

Why would you do that?

Right.

And what's happening is that money laundering moment happens inadvertently, and you have to pay attention to that. Now, if you're not the person on the phone getting that information or having that communication and someone else makes that decision in your firm, again, those are like back to the training and the protocols and what's in the agreement, what's those types of things. And so it, it is a It's scary, but in the end, I think what it is is this basic mindset of these are not your funds, these are other people's funds, and how you're required to report them and how you're required to handle them is really critical through this case.

Okay, quick game show. Ready?

Game show.

I'm gonna pirate— I'm gonna pirate a couple things from our class last week.

Steve had his Wheaties this morning. What do you think?

Yeah.

Extra cups of coffee.

We need Tiara to have a bell when we get the right answer here.

Okay.

Um, handling settlement proceeds. The lawyer represents the plaintiff and settles a PI case with the insurance company. The lawyer gets a check for $100,000, of which they are owed $30,000 as their contingent fee. The lawyer also advanced $3,000 in costs. The insurance company check is made out to the lawyer and The client. This is key. If the $30,000 is earned and the costs are incurred, is it appropriate to deposit the $100,000 check into the trust account?

I would— okay, I don't know, Lynda. To me, I would say yes, because— yes, because it's not the client's money.

Yeah, it's not the client's money. It's the client's money is in the trust account, so it's both, you know, one's holding it.

Okay. And there's a really key point there. I gave you a clue. The insurance company check is made out to the attorney and the client.

What happens?

So they both have to sign it or to—

They both have to endorse the check.

I think that's where I got tripped up, Steve, because I'm like, but then it can go in the trust because the trust is actually in the client's name.

Yeah. Okay. You kind of had me there for a minute. I'm going to be honest.

Yeah, that's a lot of information to take in. It is early, Sarah, and I don't know if that's your first coffee Or not.

But well, yeah, but it's also like, it's a dumb moment. Should go into trust. Yes. But then I was like, what does he mean by this other thing?

Yeah.

Okay, gotcha. You got me.

Gotcha. Um, let's see, here's another one.

Okay.

If the lawyer knows of a dispute over some or all of the funds, is it a problem to disburse all the money to the client? The lawyer should, should keep separate the disputed amount until the dispute is resolved.

Oh yeah, they have to keep the money in trust until the dispute is resolved, and they also have a time frame that they have to respond and get it exactly fixed.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Third parties such as the client's creditors may have just claims against funds or other property in the lawyer's custody. A lawyer may have a duty under applicable law to protect the third-party claims against wrongful interference by the client. Think about that. That's an interesting one. And they may accordingly refuse to surrender the property to the client.

Hmm.

That's an interesting one.

Did we pass the bar, Steve?

You did. But these were, these were great examples in the class I was in last week. This is— these are from my good friend Margaret Funk, who is in charge of Attorney Regulation Council here in Colorado. She had some wonderful, wonderful I mean, this list goes on and on.

She quizzed the attorneys on these?

She did. She quizzed the classroom and it was, it was great. I just love working with her and I'm hoping to bring her in on the podcast. I asked her to be a guest. Yeah.

Well, those are— so no wonder why you went silent when I was sitting here talking about all these other things. You're like going over there trying to get your stuff pulled up here.

Yes, I was. Oh, and, you know, I wanted to throw out one other thing backing up to the scenario, Lynda, where The bank takes out money for checks that the firm ordered, and they accidentally take it out of the trust account. Some banks will send their attorney client a generic email that said a transaction happened yesterday, bop bop bop bop bop, and it's very generic, but it tells them that hey, you better go look at your account, whether it's their main checking account or their trust account, because something happened in there, and it may just be a. Plain old deposit or whatever, that's fine. But if the, you know, let's say the $50 was taken out for the check order, they would've been notified by email and they would've caught it right away and they could move the money out of their operating account to cover that back into the trust account. And then if they were ever audited, they show reasonable effort. I fixed this right away when I found out about it.

Which is what you're supposed to do. I mean, I've seen it with clients that you, we have like a project list 'cause there's so many things wrong in and out. They don't transfer money. And they don't do it until, well, January. And then all of a sudden they clean up the project list because it's time to get their books in order. And it's like, this should be done more frequently, you know?

Well, look at today. We're recording on a bank holiday. And so let's say something happened on Friday in somebody's trust account. If we're not watching it by the time tomorrow comes, it's 4 days later.

Yep.

With a, with a bank holiday in the middle. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, I'll be quiet now.

Oh, no. Good. Man, this was a heavy topic for a morning session, but it's good.

It was. It's a good one.

So Denton on TikTok, send us another question because, boy, did you get us started today.

I love it.

If you liked what you heard today, don't forget to like, share, and leave a quick review. And while you're at it, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you have a question or a topic that you'd love us to cover, drop us a line at info@accountantslawpod.com, send us a message through our website accountantslawpod.com, or drop us a comment on our socials on Instagram and TikTok. Your idea might just make it into a future episode. If you want to go beyond listening, consider sponsoring an episode and connect with our community of accounting and legal professionals who love learning, laughing, and love leveling up. And as always, don't forget to join the conversation inside the Accountants Law Lab Mastermind group at accountantslawlab.com, where collaboration meets inspiration every week.

And Tiara, question for you.

You're not going to escape the note questions.

How many downloads have we had on this podcast now?

Oh, well, now you're going to have to make her go look it up, Steve.

I think she sent a notice out the other day that it was 12,000.

Yeah, it was.

And weren't we just at 11,000 a few weeks ago? So folks, this—

Like a snowball.

Yeah, it's like a snowball going. That's great. Thank you to everybody for supporting us.

Yes, for sure.

Oh, we greatly appreciate it. Absolutely.

And keep the questions going. Ooh, 12,000.

12,262 and counting. Love it.

Awesome.

See, she's young and quick.

Thank you, Tiara.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Oh, so now we should end with the, the thing. Call me, call me. You know, those songs instead of like, text me.

Love it.

We'll see you all next time.

Bye now.

Bye-bye.