| IT support for law firms covers the systems a legal practice runs on: the practice management system that holds every matter, the trust accounting required under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, and the outside systems a settlement depends on. It gets judged on deadlines, because a court date and a settlement time do not move for an outage. |
Ten to two on a Thursday, and settlement is half an hour away. The purchaser’s solicitor has the funds sitting ready, the client has the movers booked for three, and the office internet has been down since half past one.
Landonline is unreachable, and so is the trust ledger the money has to come out of. The bank and the client are ready. A fibre fault two streets away is holding up the rest.
An hour of downtime in an accounting practice costs an hour. IT support for law firms gets measured against a harder test, because a settlement time and a court date are set by somebody else.
That afternoon has a price, and so does an ordinary week in the same firm.
The figures below are illustrative. Take a twelve-person general practice in Christchurch doing property, estates and some commercial work, with four fee earners.
Each of those four loses about half an hour a week to a document that never made it onto the matter file. An email in an inbox, a signed authority saved to a desktop, a valuation sent by text. Across the year that is roughly 96 hours.
At $150 an hour of recoverable time the firm gives up about $14,400 a year to filing that did not happen, and none of it shows on a report.
Then a settlement that failed to complete on the day. The firm covered the purchaser’s penalty interest and the re-booked movers itself, and a partner spent the Saturday apologising. That came to $4,300, a one-off sitting beside the annual figure.
One boundary before the detail. Our guide for professional services firms covers the document, privilege and regulatory foundations that law and finance firms rely on. This article stays on the ground a legal practice owns: the matter, the trust account, the deadline and the safe, in firms of two partners to twenty.
What Does IT Support for Law Firms Cover?
IT support for law firms covers six things that behave differently from any other office:
- The practice management system that holds every matter
- The trust accounting that runs under its own regulations
- The outside systems a settlement depends on, Landonline first
- Court and registry filing
- The precedent bank the firm bills from
- The safe custody register behind the deed safe
Email, laptops, backup and a firewall work no differently in a law office than in an engineering consultancy. The equivalent six for an accounting practice share the software half and none of the trust or settlement half.
Few general IT providers have dealt with the second half.
How Does Legal Practice Management Software Organise a Law Firm?
Legal practice management software organises a law firm by matter, so every document, email, time entry and trust ledger line attaches to a matter number or it is effectively lost. One client can have six matters running at once: a house purchase, a will, a company restructure, a lease and two disputes.
Each carries its own file, its own ledger position, its own deadlines and often its own fee earner. The bill goes to the client and the work is tracked against the matter.
The practice management system, usually shortened to PMS, holds them together.
The names that come up in New Zealand are OneLaw, LEAP, Actionstep, Infinitylaw and Lexis Affinity, all built around the matter. Actionstep was founded in Auckland in 2004.
The regulations expect that structure. Regulation 12 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Trust Account) Regulations 2008 requires a separate trust ledger account for each client, bars any ledger account from holding money for more than one client, and allows a client’s account to be subdivided into matters.
Customer due diligence under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 belongs there too, because the identity evidence has to sit against its matter.
Any system the firm buys has to reproduce that structure, which is the first question to put to a vendor.
What happens when an email never reaches the matter file?
It stays in one person’s inbox where nobody else can find it. The common version is a client instruction sent to a fee earner on a Friday, acted on that afternoon, and never filed.
Six months later the file cannot show what was agreed. The fee earner remembers it favourably, which is worth very little once there is a dispute.
Email filing into the matter is the one feature worth paying for. A system that files from Outlook in two clicks gets used. If it takes a save, a rename and a browse, people stop by about week three.
Should documents live in the practice management system or in Microsoft 365?
Either works, as long as one is the file of record and everyone knows which. Trouble starts when half a matter sits in the practice management system and half in a SharePoint folder named after the client.
Larger practices add a dedicated document management system such as iManage or NetDocuments, which becomes the file of record in its own right.
Pick one, put the other behind it, and write the rule where a new legal executive will find it.
What Does a Law Firm Trust Account Need From Its Software?
A law firm trust account needs three things from its software: separation from the office account, a monthly reconciliation the firm can certify, and records that cannot be altered after the fact. A solicitor’s trust account holds client money under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 and its trust account regulations.
No other professional practice carries that obligation. A real estate agency runs an agency trust account under different legislation with different audit duties, and an insurance broking firm holds client money under the Insurance Intermediaries Act 1994, on ground covered separately.
Firm policies written before 2008 still cite the Law Practitioners Act 1982, which the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 replaced. Both names turn up in a firm’s own documents, so a search has to look for both.
Separation comes first and it is physical as well as logical. Trust money sits in a designated trust bank account, the office account holds fees and payroll, and the two do not meet in the banking or the software.
What does the monthly trust account certification need from the software?
It needs a reconciliation the trust account supervisor can stand behind by the tenth working day of the month. Regulation 17 requires that certification to the relevant society every month, covering whether the trust ledger reconciled correctly with the trust bank accounts, including interest-bearing deposit accounts.
So the firm needs a bank feed that reconciles cleanly, a ledger that reports per client and per matter, and an audit trail nobody can edit. Regulation 12 also asks that the recording be secure against retrospective alteration or deletion as far as practicable, which is more than a spreadsheet does.
Who should be able to authorise a payment out of trust?
Two named people, with the second approving what the first prepared. Most trust errors in small firms are process errors: the right amount to the wrong account, entered in a hurry at ten to five.
Dual authorisation in the banking and in the practice management system costs nothing and catches it. The trust account supervisor is a defined role, and should not be the only person able to move money.
What Happens if a Firm Cannot Reach Landonline on Settlement Day?
The settlement does not complete, and the firm carries the consequences. A conveyancing settlement needs Landonline reachable, the bank reachable and the funds moving inside a window measured in hours, and none of those three belongs to the firm.
Landonline is the Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand system property lawyers use to search, lodge and certify title dealings, in a process known as e-dealing. LINZ states that dealings can only be submitted between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Friday, and not on weekends or public holidays.
So a firm that loses its connection at 3pm on the Friday before a long weekend has not lost an afternoon. It has lost until Tuesday, and every client on that day’s list has to be rung.
The process also assumes the firm can produce its own paperwork. A conveyancing practitioner must hold the signed authority and instruction form, the A and I, before certifying a dealing. It is usually a scan nobody has looked at since it was filed.
Names change and a firm’s searches do not follow. The Land Transfer Act 2017 calls it a record of title, older files a certificate of title, and older ones again a computer register. A search built on one of those misses the other two.
The table below sets out what a settlement afternoon depends on, and who owns each piece.
| What the firm needs on settlement day | Who controls it | What it costs when it is down |
|---|---|---|
| Landonline for the e-dealing | Toitū Te Whenua LINZ | The dealing cannot be certified or lodged, so nothing settles |
| The office internet connection | The firm and its provider | Everything above stops, including the phones if they are cloud |
| Online banking for the trust account | The firm’s bank | Funds cannot be released even when the dealing is ready |
| The practice management system | The firm, or its cloud vendor | No trust ledger, no matter file and no authority form |
| The other side’s office | A different firm entirely | The settlement stalls on somebody else’s outage |
What does a workable fallback look like for a law firm?
A second path to the internet that switches over without anybody deciding to switch it. For most Canterbury and Otago practices that means fibre with 4G or 5G failover in the same router, for less per month than an hour of a partner’s time.
The conveyancing secretary should also hold the other side’s mobile number on paper, and somebody should be able to work the matter from home inside twenty minutes. With both in place, the Thursday this article opened on ends with a settlement.
How should court and registry filing be handled?
Treat it as a second set of systems the firm does not control, with the same fallback thinking settlement gets. A litigator has the sharper version, because a registrar’s deadline has no other side to ring.
Keep a list of every external portal the firm files into, who holds each login, and the manual alternative. Most firms find five or six, and one person holding all the credentials.
How Should a Law Firm Manage Its Precedents and Templates?
Keep them in a shared and versioned location the whole firm can reach, with one named person responsible for each. The precedent bank is a law firm’s real intellectual property, and in most small practices it sits in one partner’s folders.
Precedents are the drafted clauses, standard letters and template agreements a firm has refined over years. Document assembly merges matter data into them, so a lease or a will comes out with the names, dates and property description in place.
The same two failures show up again and again. A precedent improved on one matter never returns to the master, so the firm carries eleven different deeds of lease. Then the partner who owns the good ones retires, and nobody left can say what the firm has.
The fix is dull and it works: one location, one owner per precedent, a review date on each, and a rule that any improvement goes back to the master inside the week.
How Should a Law Firm Run Its Safe Custody Register?
As a searchable digital record tying every physical item to a numbered location, a client, a matter and a date. Safe custody covers the wills, deeds, titles and enduring powers of attorney a firm holds in a physical safe.
In most practices the register behind that safe is a spreadsheet that nobody has checked against the safe in years.
The safe custody register has to answer three questions in under a minute. What does the firm hold for this client, where in the safe is it, and who took it out last.
The register works best as a report out of the practice management system, keyed to the matter. A separate spreadsheet falls out of step with the safe, and nobody finds out until a family rings on a Monday about the will of somebody who died on Sunday.
Audit the safe once, box by box, against the register. A twelve-person firm can finish it in a day, and a first audit usually turns up items with no entry and entries with nothing behind them.
How Long Does a Law Firm Have to Keep Its Records?
Longer than most businesses, and the clocks run differently by record type. Regulation 11 requires trust account records for a client to be kept at least six years from the last transaction, and allows imaging or electronic storage after the first three years.
Matter files run on their own clocks, set by limitation periods and by the nature of the work. Wills and deeds in safe custody have no end date, and the firm may be asked for them thirty years after the file closed.
Setting a retention schedule is a general discipline and covered on its own. The part specific to a legal practice is separating the matter file, the trust record and the safe custody item.
Going paperless raises one more question. Whether an electronic signature holds up on a given document has its own rules, and some documents still carry a form requirement, so check before the scanner arrives.
How Much Does IT Support for Law Firms Cost?
IT support for law firms costs that twelve-person Christchurch practice about $780 a month, with a one-off setup of $6,500. That covers a hosted practice management system, email filing into the matter, a second internet path with automatic failover, dual authorisation on trust payments, and the safe custody register moved out of its spreadsheet.
Set the monthly figure against the $14,400 a year lost to documents that were never filed. The recurring cost is $9,360 a year, so the practice comes out about $5,040 ahead and stops losing the hours.
The one-off numbers sit on their own. The $6,500 setup goes against the $4,300 that one failed settlement already cost, so a second one would more than cover it.
Most firms do not need new software to get there. A practice usually owns a system that does more than anybody uses, and switching on what is already paid for is the cheapest place to start.
Where Should a Law Firm Start With Its IT?
Start with the matter file, because everything else hangs off it. The six steps below are the order Exodesk works through, and a twelve-person practice can clear the first four inside a month.
- Name one location as the file of record for every matter, and write down where everything else lives.
- Turn on email filing into the matter and make it the rule for every fee earner, partners included.
- Check the trust account setup: separate banking, dual authorisation, and a reconciliation the supervisor can certify by the tenth working day.
- Put a second internet path in the office with automatic failover, and test it by unplugging the first on a slow Tuesday.
- Audit the safe against the register box by box, then move the register into the practice management system.
- List every external portal the firm files into, who holds each login, and what happens on the day it is unreachable.
Good IT for law firms comes down to removing the things that can stop a Thursday afternoon, and most of them have a fixed cost and a finish date.
Book a Practice IT Review Before the Next Settlement
Exodesk has supported South Island businesses since 1989 and works with clients across Canterbury, Otago and Southland from offices in Christchurch and Dunedin. Our cloud solutions team works on IT support for law firms: how a practice management system is hosted, what happens to a settlement when the office drops off the internet, and whether the safe custody register would survive a check.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help your business or connect with us on LinkedIn to stay updated with more insights.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a practice management system in a law firm?
A practice management system is the software a legal practice uses to run matters, record time, hold documents and keep the trust ledger. Everything attaches to a matter number, so one client with six pieces of work has six separate records inside it. New Zealand firms usually choose products built for the local trust accounting rules, such as OneLaw, LEAP, Actionstep or Infinitylaw, because generic accounting software will not produce the monthly certification.
Is cloud software safe for a solicitor’s trust account?
Yes, and most New Zealand legal practice management software is now delivered that way. Three things decide whether a given vendor is safe: where the data is held, who at the vendor can see it, and whether the firm can still get a full ledger export if it leaves. Get those answers in writing before signing. Firms forget to ask about the export clause and regret it at renewal.
Can a small law firm run its trust account in Xero?
No. General accounting packages do not produce the client and matter ledger structure the trust account regulations require, and they will not generate the monthly certification a trust account supervisor has to sign. Firms run a legal trust accounting system for trust money and often still use Xero for the office account.
What is Landonline and why does a law firm depend on it?
Landonline is the system run by Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand for searching, lodging and certifying land title dealings. Every property settlement in New Zealand passes through it. It accepts dealings only on business days inside set hours, so a firm with no connection to it on a settlement day cannot settle.
How much does legal practice management software cost in New Zealand?
Expect roughly $70 to $150 per user per month for a cloud practice management system with trust accounting included, with setup and data migration charged separately, so a twelve-person firm typically lands between $700 and $1,500 a month for the software alone. The migration is the part firms underestimate, because old matter data rarely comes across clean.
Is IT support for law firms different from IT support for an accounting practice?
Yes, in four places. A law firm files by matter, holds client money under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, works to external deadlines set by a registry or a settlement time, and keeps original documents in physical safe custody. The email, laptops and backup underneath are the same in both.
Who is responsible for a law firm’s trust account records?
The trust account supervisor, a role defined in the trust account regulations and held by a qualified practitioner inside the firm, certifies the monthly reconciliation to the relevant society. The obligation stays with the firm even when the bookkeeping is outsourced.
What should a law firm do if the internet goes down before settlement?
Ring the other side immediately and say so, then move the matter to a connection that works, which usually means a phone hotspot or a fee earner’s home. A firm with automatic failover in its router will often not notice the outage at all. Settlements are routinely completed later in the day by agreement. Firms are forgiven a late settlement far more often than an unanswered phone.
Should a law firm keep original wills and deeds on site?
Many firms do, in a fire-rated safe with a register behind it, and others use an off-site document storage provider. Either is defensible, provided the register says what is in the safe and who has taken things out.
How long should a law firm keep a closed matter file?
There is no single figure, which is why the schedule has to be written per record type. Trust account records carry a minimum of six years from the last transaction, matter files are usually held longer based on limitation periods, and safe custody items are held indefinitely. Set the periods once and record the reasoning behind each. Then apply it at file closing, when somebody still knows what the file contains.
Does Exodesk provide IT support for law firms in Christchurch and Dunedin?
Yes. Exodesk supports legal practices across Canterbury, Otago and Southland from offices in Christchurch and Dunedin, and has worked with South Island businesses since 1989. That covers hosting and supporting practice management systems, building failover for settlement days, and getting a safe custody register out of a spreadsheet.
What would a failed settlement cost your firm?
The trust ledger, Landonline and the practice management system all sit behind one office connection, and most firms have never tested what happens when it drops. A free IT assessment checks that connection and its failover alongside the rest of your setup, before a settlement afternoon does it for you.
Or read more about our cloud solutions.
