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By Tammy Hoang, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor If your law firm is taxed as an S corporation, reasonable compensation is one of the most important tax issues you will ever face — and one of the easiest to get wrong. Many attorney-owners hear that S-corp distributions avoid self-employment tax and decide to pay themselves a tiny salary while pulling most of the money out as distributions. The IRS is very clear that this does not work. An S-corp shareholder who performs real s

By Tammy Hoang, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor Attorney compensation is one of the most sensitive subjects in any law firm, and it is also one of the most misunderstood from a bookkeeping standpoint. This guide is not about how much an attorney should pay themselves — that depends on each firm's situation and is a conversation for your tax advisor. It is about how compensation is recorded once those decisions are made. Partner draws, salaries, bonuses, profit sharing, and eq

By Tammy Hoang, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor Opening a new law firm is exciting, but the financial setup is where many new attorneys feel lost. Law school teaches you how to practice law, not how to structure a firm's bank accounts, set up an IOLTA trust account, or build a chart of accounts that keeps you compliant. The good news is that getting the money side right from day one is mostly a matter of working through a clear checklist. This guide walks a new law firm throu

By Tammy Hoang, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor When a law firm first reaches out about law firm bookkeeping, the conversation almost always sounds the same. The attorney is not sure whether they need a full cleanup, they are uneasy about their IOLTA account, and someone has probably told them their books are 'fine.' Over years of working with law firms, we have heard the same honest questions again and again — about start dates, IOLTA reconciliation, how long catch-up takes,

Clio Accounting can take a law firm's most tedious bookkeeping tasks — categorizing transactions, matching deposits, printing checks, and reconciling trust accounts — and turn them into a fast, repeatable, audit-ready system. For many firms, bookkeeping is still a pile of manual entry and month-end stress, but Clio Accounting is built to remove that friction with rule-based automation and compliance-focused tools. Unlike a generic accounting program, Clio Accounting is design

By Tammy Hoang, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Law Firm Bookkeeping Specialist California law firm bookkeeping in 2026 is now a license-protection priority. The State Bar of California's Client Trust Account Protection Program (CTAPP) reporting deadline is March 30, 2026, and the State Bar is randomly selecting up to 800 attorneys per year for mandatory compliance reviews. With California attorneys collectively safeguarding over $14 billion in client trust funds, the State

By Tammy Hoang, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor — Law Firm Bookkeeping Specialist The benefits of accounting software for law firms in 2026 go far beyond simple bookkeeping. For a modern law practice, legal accounting software is the difference between a firm that passes a State Bar audit cleanly and one that risks IOLTA disbarment. The right accounting software for law firms tracks trust accounts in real time, separates operating and IOLTA funds automatically, and gives part