Monthly three-way reconciliation, a ledger for every client matter, and records you could hand to the State Bar tomorrow — handled for you, not added to your week.
Solo & small firms · Flat monthly fee · Texas Rule 1.14 focused
Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 1.14 requires client and third-party funds to be held separate from the firm's own money, and complete records of those funds to be maintained and kept for five years after the representation ends. That sounds administrative until a fee dispute, an audit inquiry, or a grievance arrives — at which point the records either exist or they don't.
In practice, compliance comes down to one monthly exercise: the three-way reconciliation. Your trust bank statement balance, your trust register (book) balance, and the sum of all individual client ledger balances must agree. When they agree, you can prove no client's funds were used for another's. When they don't, the gap is the problem — and it usually means one matter is quietly funding another.
Most solo and small-firm attorneys we meet aren't cutting corners. They're carrying a docket, and the trust register drifts because reconciling it properly takes a specific process nobody at the firm owns. That's the piece we take over: the ledgers, the reconciliation, the documentation, and the monthly flag list of anything that needs an attorney decision.
Any single item below is enough to create real exposure — and every one of them is a bookkeeping process failure, not a character flaw.
The reconciliation Texas requires and most solo firms never actually complete: trust bank statement, trust book balance, and the sum of every individual client ledger agreed to the penny, every month, in writing.
Every dollar in trust belongs to a named client or matter. We maintain a separate ledger per matter so you can show, on demand, exactly whose money is in the account and why.
Most trust violations we see are timing errors, not theft: fees moved before they were earned, or costs paid from trust for the wrong matter. We tie every transfer to an invoice.
If the State Bar, a client, or your malpractice carrier asks questions, the answer should be a folder — not a reconstruction project. We keep the documentation ready in advance.
Send us the account and we'll test all three balances free, then tell you exactly what it takes to bring the records current — flat fee, quoted in writing.
We look at the trust account, the register, and whatever client ledgers exist, then tell you plainly whether the three balances agree and what has to be corrected. No charge.
If ledgers are missing or the account was never reconciled, we rebuild the trust history from statements and matter records, and document every correction and its reason.
Each month we reconcile all three balances, produce a signed reconciliation packet with the client ledger detail, and flag anything that needs your decision as the attorney.
Trust compliance is only half the picture. We keep the operating account, payroll, and financials current so the firm's own numbers are usable for taxes and lending.
A three-way reconciliation proves that three numbers agree: the trust account's bank statement balance, the trust account's book (register) balance, and the total of every individual client ledger balance. If all three tie, no client's money is missing or borrowed. If they don't, one client's funds are covering another's — the exact condition disciplinary authorities look for. We perform and document it monthly.
Best practice — and what examiners, malpractice carriers, and the Texas Access to Justice Foundation expect — is a documented three-way reconciliation every month, with the report retained. Texas Disciplinary Rule of Professional Conduct 1.14 requires client funds be held separate and complete records be maintained and kept for five years after the representation ends; monthly reconciliation is how firms actually satisfy that.
A qualified bookkeeper can maintain the trust register, the client ledgers, and the monthly three-way reconciliation. What can't be delegated is the attorney's responsibility for the funds — you review and approve, and every transfer still ties to an earned invoice. We work alongside your CPA and provide the reconciliation packets they and your carrier want to see.
In order: never completing a documented reconciliation, transferring fees before they were earned, paying one matter's costs from another matter's funds, letting bank or credit card processing fees hit the trust account, leaving stale outstanding trust checks, and having no per-matter ledger at all. Almost none of these are dishonest — they're bookkeeping process failures that create real exposure anyway.
Yes, and it's a large share of the legal work we do. We reconstruct the trust history from bank statements and matter records, build the client ledgers that should have existed, identify where funds crossed matters, and document the corrections. From there monthly reconciliation keeps it clean. We tell you what we find directly and without lecturing you.
Solo and small firms are our core legal clients — practices across Houston, Sugar Land, Katy, The Woodlands, Spring, Cypress, and the surrounding suburbs. Everything runs remotely through QuickBooks Online with secure document sharing, so there's no office visit required.
Monthly trust reconciliation is quoted as a flat fee based on the number of active matters and trust transaction volume, usually alongside your operating-account bookkeeping. Any cleanup of an unreconciled account is quoted separately as a one-time fixed fee after the free file review, so you know the total before work starts.
This page is bookkeeping guidance, not legal advice. Responsibility for client funds stays with the attorney.
Score your trust account against the rules in a few minutes
Operating books, payroll, and case-cost tracking for firms
Rebuild unreconciled trust and operating history
What trust reconciliation and monthly bookkeeping cost
Sourced market rates you can compare against
Our local service area page
Tell us how to reach you and roughly how many active matters hold trust funds. We'll review the account and send back what it takes to get the records compliant — usually within one business day.