Special Thanks to Paul Carlson, CPA of Law Firm Velocity, for his collaboration on this article.

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Law firms who focus on immigration law face two unique challenges. First, they deal with a large volume of trust activity; and secondly, many of them use flat-fee billing, which means firms have plenty of incomplete work that needs to be tracked. Which technology solution a firm chooses can significantly affect how efficiently these challenges are handled.

Although Soluno (now Actionstep Legal Accounting) works across all areas of practice, it is a highly effective tool for lawyers working in the immigration law space. Its trust processes and ability to handle unbilled funds were conceived from over 50 years in the legal and trust accounting market. Here are two important ways that Actionstep Legal Accounting can help resolve your trust issues:

1.  No more tenuous reconciliations  

When using software that lacks robust trust accounting (or any accounting for that matter), the process of weekly or monthly reconciliation can be a daunting task for many firms. Users have grown accustomed to duplicating trust account activity in at least two systems, and then manually researching and updating any exceptions that are uncovered during reconciliation. For immigration law, this job becomes even tougher because of the sheer volume of trust transactions that firms need to reconcile.

Actionstep Legal Accounting’s complete accounting tackles these challenges and reconciles for you. The software’s 3-way trust reconciliation process ensures that operating, trust, and credit card entries are all resolved. Any outstanding exceptions are listed and can easily be associated to the appropriate matter(s). Once completed, reconciliation reports will always include a comparison with your firm’s client trust listing which is appended to the bank reconciliation report, thus eliminating the need for deep dives to find crucial information.

This 3-way reconciliation system eliminates time-consuming manual effort. Actionstep Legal Accounting can easily handle the high volumes of trust account activity that immigration law firms have to manage, which in turn prevents unnecessary errors and gives time back to your firm for other important tasks.

2.  Never lose track of uncompleted work

It is not uncommon for firms that work with flat-fee billing to move funds from a trust account into an operating (or general) account before beginning a matter. Until the case is complete and an invoice is produced, firms will have unbilled W.I.P. The value of your firm’s uncompleted work is an important dollar amount that must be tracked and managed effectively.

With Soluno (now Actionstep Legal Accounting), it’s easy to monitor the amount of uncompleted work using one of two comprehensive reports. The Client Ledger displays the total dollar amount owed in uncompleted work in relation to all other trust account activity, including trust account deposits and disbursements. For firms looking for a complete breakdown of all uncompleted work and a view of all open cases within Legal Accounting, they can look to the Client Summary: Files with Balances report. Both these reports are default views within Legal Accounting’s reporting functions.

When it comes to immigration law, it is imperative to deal with trust accounting in an efficient and intuitive way. And when it comes to trust accounting, Actionstep Legal Accounting also handles it with ease. If you’re looking for a Cloud-based software that can accurately handle high quantities of trust account activity while remaining IOLTA compliant; and can easily keep track of all unearned fees, you should book a demo to see Actionstep Legal Accounting in action today.

This blog post was originally published on June 16th, 2020 on the Soluno (now Actionstep Legal Accounting) blog, in collaboration with Paul Carlson, CPA of Law Firm Velocity. It has been reposted with permission.