michaeltthurgood@gmail.com Trust accounting errors are among the most common causes of bar discipline for small law firm attorneys. A single miscategorized transaction, a failed three-way reconciliation, or a temporary commingling of client and operating funds — even one made in good faith — can trigger a state bar investigation regardless of intent. The software you use … Read more
Accounting firms have a payroll problem that most payroll software vendors don’t acknowledge: the people who run the software are the same people who know exactly what’s wrong with it. CPAs process payroll for dozens of clients every week. They know which platforms miscalculate multi-state withholding, which ones have clunky QuickBooks sync, and which ones … Read more
Law firm payroll is more complicated than payroll for most small businesses. A 5-attorney firm isn’t just paying five salaries — it’s managing equity partner draws vs. W-2 compensation, associate salaries tied to billable hour targets, paralegal hourly rates, bonus structures linked to origination credit, and potentially multi-state withholding when attorneys work across jurisdictions. Add … Read more
Accountants evaluating TaxDome and Canopy are almost always looking at the same underlying problem: too many disconnected tools, too much time lost switching between them, and a client experience that feels like it was designed in 2010. Both platforms promise to fix this. Both fall short in different ways for different firms. The honest answer … Read more
Clio and PracticePanther are the two most commonly evaluated practice management platforms for small law firms under 15 attorneys. They cover similar ground — matter management, time tracking, billing, trust accounting, document storage, and client portal — at similar price points for comparable tiers. Yet they make different trade-offs that matter significantly depending on how … Read more
The average law firm loses 23 cents of every dollar earned to billing leakage — time worked but not captured, invoices sent but not followed up, trust account errors that require expensive reconciliation to fix. According to LeanLaw’s 2025 research across 700+ law firms, firms using purpose-built legal accounting software recover an average of $61,000 … Read more
Accounting firms are adopting AI faster than almost any other professional service sector. According to Karbon’s State of AI in Accounting 2026 Report, 92% of accounting professionals now use AI in their work — and firms that train staff on AI save an average of 7 weeks per year per employee. The efficiency gains are … Read more
The American Bar Association’s 2025 Legal Technology Survey found that 36% of attorneys now use AI in their law practice — up from 19% in 2023. Among solo and small firm attorneys, the adoption rate is accelerating faster than at large firms, driven primarily by cost pressure rather than innovation interest. When one attorney can … Read more
Accounting firms lose more revenue to unbilled time than to any other single factor. A 2024 AICPA survey found that accounting professionals capture only 67% of their actual billable hours — meaning a CPA billing at $200/hour loses approximately $26,000 per year in revenue that was earned but never recorded. For a 5-person firm, that’s … Read more
The advertised price of accounting practice management software and what a CPA firm actually pays are rarely the same number. Most platforms lead with a per-user monthly price that excludes implementation fees, omits the QuickBooks or Xero subscription most firms still need alongside it, and doesn’t account for the add-on modules that turn a $49/user/month … Read more