Why You Should Use Legal Accounting Software Rather Than A Generic Off The Shelf System

Note that we said legal accounting software for law firms. There is a multitude of accounting software that you can buy, some of which is off the shelf and some of which is specific to the legal profession. If you are going to invest in software, it is not a good idea to use a generic off the shelf solution because the legal profession has its own special requirements and software that is specifically for lawyers takes all that into account. 

To begin with, you need to record your time. However, you can be working on a case and then you receive a telephone call from a client which takes ten minutes. With legal accounting software for law firms many have timers that can be stopped and started in the programmes you use every day such as word processing, emails, your calendar and so on, and most legal software provides a traditional time sheet that also has timers. When you click finished, the time is saved to the client and matter.

You also need to differentiate between client expenses such as time recording and filing fees from things such as postage costs. Your software should be able to track the different costs and account for them correctly on your financial statements. You may also need a different approach on contingency cases. In addition, you need to be able to account for flat fee and retainer billing.

It is also important to be able to receive a payment and apply it to the correct account, and legal billing software will provide you with choices as to how payments are applied. This is particularly important if a matter is being paid by more than one person, or where the payment should be applied to expenses rather than the fee. Legal billing software will enable you to do this.