Legal accounting software is a computer program that keeps track of a law firm’s billable hours, records of employee timesheets, automatic billing, postings of the firm’s court calendar, and general accounting functions.
Legal accounting software is critical to the efficient running of the modern, profitable law office because the main reason that a law firm is not profitable is not usually for lack of clients, but lack of consistent accounting and failure to get paid in a timely and cost effective fashion.
In order to make money, the first thing that a law firm must do is to make sure that all of the hours are billed to their clients. Many lawyers are negligent when it comes to writing down the accurate information of how much time they spend with different clients. This means lost billable hours as well as a precise amount of time that is spent with each client; thereby making a cost analysis impossible. With legal billing software, not only will you be able to keep track of billable hours more exactly, you will be able to pull up graphs that will compare the cost and profit for each client.
Legal Billing Software
Legal billing software can also assign employee hours and the cost of legal service provision to individual clients. This way, you know how much time is spent on each client by the paralegals and secretaries in an office. Legal billing software can also determine the productivity of individual lawyers, which is important for any profitable law firm to know.
Legal Calendaring software
This kind of software also integrates court calendars into the accounting system – which includes the court dates and the documents required for each case. An integrated court calendar cuts down on missed or ill-prepared court appearances.
Law Firm Accounting Software
Law firm accounting software cuts down on the cost of hiring outside accountants to perform the less meaningful accounting tasks. This is because law firm accounting software generally performs the functions of recording and balancing the general ledger, payroll taxes and deductions, trust accounting, payables, receivables, monthly and quarterly financial statements, and check writing. Because everything is integrated into one legal accounting software system, record keeping is much more simplified. With this simplification comes a better understanding of the bottom line and how to become more profitable as a law firm.
As a bonus, some legal accounting software generates legal PDF forms that can be generated to use in court or for billing purposes. The plus to this function is that once a client’s information is entered into the system, there is no need to re-enter it for the variety of forms you will need to generate over the course of the services you provide to your clients.
Filed under Legal Practice Management Software by Terry
