How to Maintain Compliance With Your Attorney Bookkeeping

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. So I thought for today's post, it's just going to be generally a shorter post, but I wanted to share with you the reasons why you want to hire an accounting firm that has the ability to work specifically with law firms, a firm that works in them day and night and knows the industry. So it's important to maybe go down that road of finding that accountant that is knowledgeable in your industry, who speaks the same language as you, knows the pain points. And it's really one of the reasons why you would want to hire someone that has that ability over maybe a generalist or a person that does the kind of work that works with all different types of firms. So in that case, you might find that if you get this accountant that can work with you, it'll be less work for you, right, when you start to A relationship with that, with that accountant that has that knowledge of your industry. So it's important to think about maybe finding an attorney bookkeeper more so than just a person who does books for anybody. Someone who knows, A, what apps to use that will help automate the processes, save you time, save you money. Save money for your practice, save money in your practice. We have ways of knowing exactly where there may be errors in the file or places that maybe were not addressed. Especially when it comes to working with the IOLTA bookkeeping, right? You start to get into the IOLTA and the trust accounting. Sometimes I'll find when I work with firms that they've maybe not kept good order in that file. A lot of them will balance the heck out of the bank account, but not realize that the trust accounts have to tie back to the IOLTA, right? So those accounts have to be the same balance at the end of the day as the balance in the books on the, on the bank account. So we find that happens a lot. And it's important to really— for compliance reasons, you know, an attorney can lose their license if those records are not kept in a nice, neat, and orderly fashion. So that's really the biggest reason why you would want to hire somebody that knows what they're doing. Anybody can balance a checkbook. It's more involved to make sure that all the trust accounts have been individually reconciled, and then the trust account as a whole has been reconciled to match the bank balance. That's one of the big reasons why you should hire an accounting firm that knows your industry. So in our firm, we use specifically LeanLaw, and it's a fabulous app. We know the people behind it. They're really great people. The main— one of the principal partners is an attorney. So he is a practicing attorney. He knows exactly what's needed for the law firms, and they're constantly evolving this. Reports that are in LeanLaw, and they're constantly adding to them. are hands down the best. You can find out which partner is making, you know, what amounts they're making. You can see partner reports to see who's generating the most revenue. You can find reports in LeanLaw if it's set up properly where you can track an originating attorney fee as opposed to when the other attorney, the working attorney, does the work in it. You can separate that. There's so much in there. And that's why you'd want to work with an accounting pro. specific to LeanLaw that knows that app inside and out and how it works with QuickBooks and how you can use the 2-way sync to help use the billable expenses to connect everywhere. Add another app on it like Receipt Bank or Hubdoc, and you've got this beautiful automated flow. And I can refer back into the post on that actual flow. But it's, it's truly a lot about consistency and making sure that you Have a nice task and balance of workflow set up that you're tracking everything as you go along. It's not something that's let go and not attended to. It's important to go over the numbers all the time to make sure things are working well and finding out— sometimes law firms can get involved into getting into almost like a pattern where they're not realizing that they're not really working towards where the more revenue is, right? Attorneys and law firms— law firms are businesses, and you should be able to find a way to generate more income, like, just like I do in my business? Where am I going to find more revenue for my business? And I track the specific things that I sell to find out what is the place that's going to get me the most money. So those are the things that you really want to look at when you're hiring a bookkeeper, hiring an accounting firm that is going to really be there for you to hold your hand through the entire process and be able to answer the questions and know the terminology and work with you specific to your, your type of industry to help you get through the process and take the accounting needs off of your plate and let the professional do it. Just like I can't practice law, it's good to hire an accounting firm that does exactly that, takes care of the accounting so you don't have to worry about it. One less thing you worry about so you can worry about running your business and not having to be tied into all the numbers and tracking all the things that are part of being in practice. So hopefully that answers the question of why you should hire us and why you should hire a good accounting firm. And if you have any questions, comments, please feel free to reach out. We would love to be your accounting firm and help you. Thank you for watching. Bye now.