Bookkeeping for Law Firms & Attorneys

We maintain your trust and IOLTA ledgers to state bar standards, with client funds properly segregated from operating cash and every deposit and disbursement tied to the client and matter it belongs to. We keep the individual client ledgers, the trust journal, and the supporting records an examiner asks for, so the trust accounting is inspection-ready every month rather than reconstructed under pressure. Keeping the ledgers clean this way is bar compliance in practice, which is why we treat it as the first thing the books have to get right.

We run the three-way reconciliation every month and chase every variance to zero, so the trust bank statement, the book balance, and the total of all client ledgers reconcile before the month closes. A break gets identified and resolved while it is small and the trail is fresh, and you get the reconciliation as a document you can hand to an examiner. Running it monthly is the difference between a five-minute correction and a finding that puts the account, and the license, in question.

We track retainers and advance deposits by client and matter, hold them as unearned in trust, and move funds to operating only on a clean, documented earning trigger such as a billed invoice. The transfer is recorded on both sides with the supporting detail, so revenue is recognized when it is earned and the trust ledger always reflects what is truly the client’s. That keeps the earned-versus-unearned line defensible, which matters as much for a fee dispute as it does for your tax return.

We track costs advanced, reimbursables, and fees at the matter level, so each client and matter carries its own picture of what was spent, what was billed, and what came back. Advanced costs are recorded as receivables rather than sunk expense, reimbursements are matched against them, and unbilled advances surface as a number you can act on. We bring billing and payment activity from your practice-management platform, including Clio, MyCase, and LawPay, into the accounting file so the books reconcile to the system your matters already live in.

We run your books on QuickBooks Online or Xero on a monthly cycle. Every transaction is categorized against a chart of accounts built for a law practice, every operating bank and credit card account is reconciled to the statement, and payroll from your provider is booked correctly, including the employer taxes firms routinely miscount as profit. You get a profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash flow summary on the same date every month, alongside the trust reconciliation, with a short note on anything that moved and one batched question list instead of a drip of emails.

We keep accrual-clean books with the matter-level detail a partnership needs, so distributions, guaranteed payments, and origination credit are calculated from finished numbers instead of estimates. Partner capital and draw accounts are maintained through the year, so each partner’s share is current and the year-end true-up is a routine step rather than a scramble. When the split depends on collections or matter profitability, the underlying detail is already there, so the conversation is about the business and not about whether the numbers can be trusted.

We keep accrual-clean, reconciled books all year, so your tax preparer, ours or yours, works from finished numbers and the return is a filing step rather than a fire drill. The trust accounting is documented, retainers are correctly classified as unearned until earned, and matter-level detail supports whatever schedule the return needs. When you apply for a line of credit or partner financing, the financials are already in a form a lender expects, and the same practice that handles technical accounting for venture-backed and public companies stands behind them.

The work is done in QuickBooks Online or Xero, read-only bank feeds for your operating and trust accounts, a connection to your practice-management software such as Clio, MyCase, or LawPay, and a shared inbox for the statements and bills we need. You get a fixed monthly delivery date, the three-way trust reconciliation with it, a standing way to reach us, video calls when a conversation beats an email, and a CPA who answers within one business day. You also get a CPA-led team at a flat monthly price a solo bookkeeper cannot match on depth, keeping your books to the standard the rest of our practice works to.