It is the appearance of misconduct rather actual misconduct that can sink a legal practice. Attorneys have to be very careful how they conduct business since an innocent blunder can trigger at best a bad public image and at worst criminal charges or disbarment. Dedicated legal billing and accounting software protects law offices against many of the errors that can lead to unintentional ethics violations.
If nothing else, legal billing software protects you from arithmetic errors. You can be sure clients are never accidentally overcharged because a bookkeeper made a simple math mistake when adding up the bill. Audits go more smoothly because all the numbers total correctly. Of course any basic business financial package can do this but that’s not the only function lawyers need from accounting software.
Specialized billing software for attorneys includes functions to handle trusts. You can be sure to keep funds separate so you don’t unintentionally “borrow” from one client’s funds to pay another client’s expenses. Trust administration is even more fraught with peril than other legal financial operations so that extra layer of verification and protection is necessary to avoid complications.
Another source of ethics charges against attorneys is conflict of interest. However the complex web of social and business relationships we all have means it is very difficult to track all of the possible conflicts until it is too late. This is why we included automatic conflict checking in our attorney time and billing software. With the click of a mouse you can check a new client’s relationships against all the other relationships in the database, uncovering potential conflicts before they threaten the integrity of your practice.
Easy TimeBill provides powerful protection against inadvertent ethics breaches but it does something else: it shows intent. Even if your practice should mistakenly cross a line, you can show a judge that you have made a strong effort to avoid ethics problems by using specialized law practice management software.
Explore our website to find out more about how Easysoft Legal Software’s attorney time and billing software doesn’t just simplify your practice–it also protects it.
