Accounting for Attorneys
Explore legal accounting essentials: compliance, financial management, tech tools, taxation, and strategic insights for attorneys' financial success.
Avoidable Horror Stories: What Every Lawyer Should Know About Their Firm’s Accounting
Running a law firm is demanding enough without unexpected financial “surprises” lurking beneath the surface. Yet every week, attorneys come to us with issues that started small - an overlooked payroll setting, a mismarked trust account, a billing mistake - and grew quietly into full-blown crises.
At The Proper Trust, we’ve seen just about everything. And while we share these stories with deep empathy, each one offers a lesson every law firm should take to heart.
When Payroll Goes Sideways
One of the most common surprises we see involves payroll setups gone wrong: S-Corp owners not marked correctly, health insurance misclassified, retirement plans mismatched, or cafeteria plans handled improperly.
Sometimes the mistake dates back years and wasn’t caught because bookkeeping was handled by someone “good with numbers” but not trained in legal-specific compliance. Attorneys assume payroll platforms handle everything automatically. Payroll platforms assume attorneys know what to tell the...
