THE PROPER TRUST
Trust Compliance
Trust accounting compliance, handled by people who live in it every day.
Trust accounting is governed by your state bar, and getting it wrong can put a license at risk, even when the error is unintentional. The Proper Trust builds your trust account structure correctly from the start and maintains it every month, so your firm stays compliant and audit-ready without you having to think about it.
Why it matters:
The most common mistake we see is trust transactions recorded as simple transfers between bank accounts. That looks correct on the surface, but it never touches the trust liability account, so the two records can never reconcile and the account drifts out of balance without anyone noticing until it's a problem. A three-way reconciliation isn't optional, in most states it's a bar requirement, and we complete it every single month without exception.
This includes:
- A properly structured trust liability account: a parent trust liability account, with a sub-account for each client, and a sub-account for each matter under that client
- Monthly three-way reconciliation confirming your bank statement, your trust ledger, and your billing software's trust balance (in Clio or LeanLaw) all agree, to the penny
- Complete segregation of trust, operating, and payroll funds
- Timely transfers: earned fees moved to operating promptly, unused retainers returned promptly
- Documentation kept audit-ready: bank statements, reconciliations, client sub-ledgers, and proof of transfers, organized and ready to produce if the bar asks
We don't just provide a service,
we provide a white-glove approach.
Your dedicated remote team builds and maintains this structure as part of your ongoing engagement, with real-time visibility through a secure portal rather than a once-a-year scramble before an audit.
