Money Talk Lawyers or Accountants Who Work With Legal Firms

Thanks for the info.

I assume it is okay to only have one trust account and I just track who paid you what and how much you have earned from who. Or do you need to keep each client's funds in separate accounts?

Speaking as an attorney, commingling funds is basically the ethics boogeyman. It's the quickest way to get yourself disbarred. You definitely want to make sure you understand the requirements.

Not to be Debbie Downer, but if you didn't even know whether there were any "unique situations to legal accounting," I'm not sure you should be offering yourself as a bookkeeper to law firms. You need to do a lot of reading and talk to some professionals in the field before you take on these gigs.

I hope for your sake you are certified. And if you are, I'm pretty sure you will be able to handle most, if not all situations fairly easily. If the need arises, consult your peers. Plus, if you are certified, you know you can find anything you need through AICPA pronouncements. Good luck.

There's no need to get snippy with me. I've been on a state bar "task force" related to attorney discipline and I would say that accounting issues are the #2 reason that lawyers get in trouble. (#1 is just ghosting, disappearing, and not telling clients. This happens far more often than you'd expect).

And the scary part, from our perspective, is that "I didn't know it was happening" is no defense. There was a case not long ago where a law office admin screwed up some accounting, unbeknownst to her boss. As soon as the lawyer found out he immediately took money out of his personal checking account to cover it - end result was the client was unaffected. But the lawyer was disciplined anyway. It's not that the rules are that uniquely complicated, but there's no materiality requirement and no intent requirement. So you can get called on the carpet even for a minor, unintentional error.

as a young lawyer myself, i can tell you that i would be horrified if i knew that the guy i just gave my books too was on tigerdroppings asking for advice.

Articles on this subject appear from time to time in the Bar publication.

Also, ethics opinions on the subject.

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s a young lawyer myself, i can tell you that i would be horrified if i knew that the guy i just gave my books too was on tigerdroppings asking for advice.

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What, we don't know what we are doing? =)

Look, I have a number of CPAs in various states that I am friends with, either on a personal and/or professional level. No CPA knows everything about everything, and we always pick up the phone / send an e-mail to others asking for help and advice on dealing with a particular situation. This is especially true for state tax issues.

I was able to resolve a $17,000 issue with a non-resident California return by calling a CA CPA I know and taking to her for 10 minutes, asking how they handle situations like this in CA, and then doing the same thing.

There is no shame whatsoever in admitting what you don't know and then trying to learn it.

I'd much rather hire the guy that knows that he doesn't know it all as opposed to one of those people that knows every fricking thing about every fricking thing.