Billing is the lifeblood of law practice, but many of us have no idea what we are doing when it comes to invoicing and collecting payments. Similarly, we know we have to adhere to regulations regarding trust accounts, but how do we as attorneys actually accomplish three-way reconciliation? Law school did not prepare us to strike out on our own, and many attorneys find themselves hampered by tedious administrative tasks when we should be more focused on working our cases.
This is where legal technology comes into play. You can log your hours, send out invoices, collect payments, and reconcile your trust account with a few clicks of a button. And, the Texas Bar just made life a lot easier for Lone Star State practitioners by partnering with Smokeball to offer billing and trust accounting software, completely for free.
Billing Doesn’t Have to be Terrible.
One of the pain points of law firm life – as too many of us are aware – is inputting your time. I hated it. Detested it. And, I was lazy about it. But you don’t get paid unless you bill for your time. Using a software that has this feature built-in will change your life.
Now, you can seamlessly go from logging your time to producing draft invoices. Your prebills are now available within the same software ecosystem. And, when you are ready to finalize and send your bills, you just have to click one button to send them out all at once. And, the software will automatically deduct trust funds from these balances if you so desire. Payments are integrated right into the invoice itself, which means you collect money faster and with far less hassle.
Now you can work smarter, not harder, when it comes to billing.
Trust Accounting Does Not Have to Give You Nightmares.
We are all aware of Rule 1.14 and how we need to protect and account for client funds. But, this is easier said than done. Now we have to figure out on our own how to perform a three-way trust account reconciliation. What does that even mean? Simply put, you just have to match up the balances from your individual client ledgers and your main trust ledger with that of your bank account statement. And, you guessed it, legal technology can help you out with all of that.
Smokeball’s trust accounting software (again offered for FREE to Texas lawyers) helps you stay compliant easily by allowing you to plug in your monthly bank statement balance and giving you the ability to compare that with your trust ledgers. This helps ensure that all of your balances match up and that you are compliant.
More about Smokeball Bill and the State Bar of Texas
Smokeball, the industry-leading legal practice management software platform, in an exclusive partnership with the State Bar of Texas, is providing all State Bar of Texas members with free access to Smokeball Bill, Smokeball’s trust accounting and billing software solution for law firms. This tool will help solo and small firm practitioners effectively, efficiently and compliantly manage their client trust accounts for improved client service.