One enquiry. One matter. Every unit of client money accounted for.
Axis Legal is a practice management system for law firms. A firm records its work by saying what happened – an enquiry has come in, these hours were worked, the client has sent money on account. Each sentence writes the file and posts the books in the same movement.
So the matter register and the accounts never have to be brought back into line.
See it on your own jurisdictionOne matter, followed from first contact to
cleared funds
- Practice Manager
The enquiry comes in
A prospective client approaches the firm. The Practice Manager writes it up the same day: who approached, what it concerns, how it reached the firm, and what the instruction looks worth. It stands as an enquiry – a record in its own right. The firm reads it, checks it, and decides afterwards whether to act.
- Client Partner
Conflicts, before the firm acts
The search runs before the instruction is taken on. It goes through every client the firm has acted for and every party named on any matter. The register keeps the search, the name of the partner who ran it, and the day. Showing that the firm looked is as much of the obligation as the answer is.
- Client Partner
Client opened, matter opened
The enquiry converts. The client, the matter and the party on the other side are one record – and that opposing party is what the next conflicts search will find.
- Fee earners
Time on the file
Fee earners record their time, a sentence each. Nobody types a rate. Every hour is charged at the grade that worked it, from the firm's own card. One rate per grade, held across the year, is what lets a firm answer what an hour costs. Money laid out for the client goes on the file as a disbursement and rides on the next fee note beside the hours.
- Trust Accountant
Money on account
The client sends money on account. It goes into that client's own account. The books record it twice in one movement – held by the firm, owed to the client – and the balance comes back with both entries beside it.
- Finance Manager
The fee note
Everything unbilled on the matter is billed, dated, and given its terms. The hours carry straight through, each marked billed as it goes on. The fee note is a document on the file and an entry in the books. One event, written once.
- Finance Manager
The client settles
The payment goes against the fee note. The receipt reaches the bank and the ledger in the same movement, so what the firm is owed stays right without anybody reconciling it. Ask what has been paid and the answer is read from the books – so it reads the same wherever the firm looks.
- Finance Partner
What the matter came to
One question: what was billed, what was collected, and what is still held for the client. Back comes the matter whole.
What a firm is judged on
Client money – the client account, or trust account – is held apart from the firm's own.
Every client's money sits in that client's account
Ask what the firm is holding and whose it is. The answer comes back client by client, with the total, and with every unit of it attributed to somebody.
A payment out draws only on the money of the client it is for
Asked to pay a court fee out of one client's account while holding less than the amount, the payment is refused – and the refusal says how much was there and whose it was.
A bank can give a firm the total. This is what a reconciliation is made of.
Insufficient trust balancePayment refusedAvailable150,000Requested400,000That is 150,000 in the client account for this client, and it is the only money this disbursement can draw on. What the firm holds for its other clients is not available to it.
Both balances stand where they were. Every client account carries the name of the client whose money it holds – so this is the ledger saying whose money it is, not a habit the firm has been keeping.
Ten seats, and two of them are kept apart
Each seat is served the work it does, and that one rule governs the screens, the figures on them, and what the person can ask for.
Two of the ten are separated on purpose. The Trust Accountant moves client money in, out and between accounts, and raises no bill. The Client Partner runs the matter and holds none of the money.
Ask the Trust Accountant to bill the matter, and the answer is a sentence the client could be shown: Submit Fee Note is not part of your role. An administrator can grant it if you need it.
The matter
Client Partner
Runs the matter.
Holds none of the moneyThe money
Trust Accountant
Moves client money in, out and between accounts.
Raises no billThe other eight seatsManaging PartnerFinance PartnerPractice ManagerFinance ManagerBilling ClerkOffice ManagerHR ManagerSystem Administrator
A posting nobody can take back waits for a person
Approving a posting you cannot see is not consent.
Ordinary work goes straight through
- Opening a client
- Recording an hour
- Drafting a fee note
Work that cannot be taken back stops and asks first
- Putting a document on the ledger
- Cancelling one already posted
- Moving client money in any direction
- Writing off a fee note
- Running the payroll
- Closing the year
What stops is shown whole. Every posting waiting, and every detail of it exactly as it will be used. Nothing summarised, nothing reworded.
Approve or decline. Declining takes a reason. The question is put before anything runs – because approval asked for after the entry exists is a notice, not an approval.
The whole run is linked. The firm can have the chain checked whenever it wants.
The file says who did what, and it can be proved
Every action is kept with the person who took it and the moment they took it. Nothing posted is edited. A mistake is put right by a reversing entry, so the error and the correction both stand.
Each entry carries a fingerprint of the one before it, which links the whole run into a chain. The firm can have that chain checked whenever it wants.
The check answers three things:
- whether the books balance
- whether the chain is unbroken, and where it breaks if it is not
- whether every cancellation is a whole one
What sits underneath
A double-entry ledger. Every fee note, receipt, deposit and payment out is written as a matched pair that must agree before anything is saved.
The trial balance, the debtors ageing, the matter's own figures and the client-money reconciliation all read that one set of books. Amounts are kept as exact figures rather than approximations, so a total is the sum of its lines.
The firm says what happened in plain English.What reaches the books is ordinary, auditable accounting.
How it reaches a firm
Axis Legal is an edition of Axis, our multi-vertical platform – a configuration of it, not a bespoke build. That is why a ten-partner firm in one jurisdiction and a ten-partner firm in another do not require two engineering projects.
Three ways in, depending on what a firm already runs:
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Leave the data where it is and pull from itAxis reads from what the firm already runs
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Run alongside what existsBoth systems in use, side by side
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Migrate across by scriptMoved over in one pass