An Introduction to Legal Accounting
Speaker: Darren Whelan
Length: 2.5 Hours
Published September 24, 2022
Last Updated on May 1, 2023
Who is this training for?
This on demand workshop is for Solicitors, Lawyers, Accountants, Compliance Officers, COFA’s, Legal Accounts Professionals, Legal Cashiers and anyone that is new to the legal profession that has any involvement in working in legal finance and compliance.
Purpose of this training?
The finance department of a firm is responsible for managing the day-to-day transactions and finances of the business. This includes bookkeeping, preparation of balance sheets, cash flow reports, financial statements, record keeping and reporting. It also includes managing the payroll and accounts of the business. The finance department will also be involved with managing and conducting internal audits and ensuring compliance with the SRA Accounts Rules.
Nearly all firms that transact client money will have a legal cashier, or in larger firms, a team of cashiers with the role being segregated into areas such as credit control, billing, compliance, management accountants and cashiering.
This on demand workshop is designed to give an introduction to legal finance and how it all fits within legal practice.
- The Role of the Legal Finance Professional/Cashier
- Introduction to Basic Double Entry Bookkeeping
- Client, Business and Petty Cash Accounts
- SRA Accounts Rules – An Overview
- Banking
- Disbursements and Recharges – An Overview
- Practice Management Software and Reporting
- The Reporting Accountant and the Annual Audit
- The Regulator and Investigations
#1. You have paid a disbursement from the business account and now have sufficient money held in the client account towards it.
Are you required to send the client a bill or other written notification of costs prior to transferring the money from the client account to the business account?
#2. Withdrawals from the client bank account are recorded to the client cash book as:
#3. What is the name given to the ledger layout commonly used within legal practice?
#4. What is the definition of ‘costs’ within the SRA Glossary?
#5. Your firm prepare a lot of wills and fixed fee interviews as one-off transactions for clients. However, instead of opening an individual client ledger for each client, you have a general ledger on which you record the details of each client and the costs received.
Is this a breach of the SRA Accounts Rules?
#6. I no longer need to consider time frames when transferring costs (fees and disbursements) to the business account?
#7. What does MLRO stand for?
#8. The petty cash tin is another form of business/office bank account?
#9. What is the definition of disbursement within the SRA Glossary?
#10. A client bank account must contain the word ‘Client’ within the account name?
Further Information
Practice notes and training sessions represent the Association of Legal Compliance & Accounts’ view of good practice in a particular area. They are not intended to be the only standard of good practice that firms can follow.
Practice notes and training sessions are not legal advice, and do not necessarily provide a defence to complaints of misconduct or poor service. While we have taken care to ensure that they are accurate, up to date and useful, we will not accept any legal liability in relation to them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why On Demand
It’s really simple:
- Reduced cost
- Can be watched anywhere, anytime on any device – no travel time or cost
- Shorter and more efficient than face-to-face
- Recorded and can be replayed at your leisure
Online – the Cons
On Demand is not for everyone one. People learn differently and watching a pre-recorded training video can feel very lonely and isolated. It requires strong, self-motivation and time management skills. There is no opportunity to ask a question and receive an answer straight away as you would with an online or a face-to-face workshop.
No. In order to watch them, you must watch them whilst logged into the website.
