Lynda ArtesaniLegal Accountant and Data Migration Specialist at The Proper Trust

Surprising Truths About Attorneys and Their Balance Sheets!

4 Jun 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:34

In this brief monologue, the speaker highlights a common problem among attorneys: many are unfamiliar with basic accounting concepts such as balance sheets and trust account reconciliation. The speaker describes how attorneys often cannot recognize when a trust account is out of balance, and they focus primarily on the profit and loss statement without verifying it against their personal checkbook or other balance sheet items. The discussion also touches on how transactions like mortgage payments affect the balance sheet, emphasizing the need for attorneys to understand the full financial picture rather than just the bottom line.

Chapters

Most attorneys don't even know what the heck that is when you bring it up in front of them and say, look, here's your balance sheet. I blew it out by all dates, sorted it by year, and your balances don't align. What? They don't even know that they're out of balance in trust. So you start as rudimentary— rudimentarily as there, and then go into the profit and loss, which their eyes go right to the bottom of. Right to the bottom. Does that match my checkbook? You know, how come if I have this much money here, how come my checkbook doesn't have that much money? Then you got to get into the balance sheet again because you put money on the mortgage or whatever. Spent it on alone.