Thinking differently: What it takes to make lawyers understand accounting
Every day in courtrooms, separate but highly related words are bitterly argued. Often two synonyms are put up against one another, challenged and scaled on a balance of probabilities. Was it recklessness? Or negligence? Knowingly, or ought to have known?
This is a lawyer’s bread and butter.
Entire books are written into the law, predicated upon the fact the definition of a word can be argued persuasively whilst jurisprudence develops in tandem and shapes the profession.
To much of the world, the kind of conversations lawyers have on a regular basis could be construed as merely semantics--especially to a layman of the law. But for those who have spent decades wading through jurisprudence, there’s almost always a very good reason why some words are used in favour of others.
After years of life lived inside the bubble of law, practitioners develop a blindness of their own knowledge of legalese. Those who speak and read this language don’t find their skills to be particularly remarkable unless engaged in conversations with those who are equally as fluent.
For us, though, as software providers for legal practitioners, we were at first amazed when (in 2011) many of our clients expressed such an aversion to the kinds of vocabulary utilized on a regular basis by accountants!
Let’s take even the most basic use of “debit” and “credit” from an accounting perspective. Substitute these words for “withdrawals” and “deposits”, and suddenly the world of accounting isn't so different.
We understand that accounting doesn't have to be intimidating. This is why we've been spending more than 6 years delivering and developing a framework for practitioners to conduct their legal matters while automating accounting. The best part about our software is that it actually makes sense to the brain of a lawyer.
Instead of trying to learn accounting, clients using uLaw are actually conducting automated bookkeeping and practice management while living and breathing within a legal matter, using terms they understand within the context of any legal practice.
So if you don’t know what an “expense posting” is, don’t sweat it. This component of accounting is merely a process our software automatically handles when you navigate to disbursements.
Let’s look at another example, such as “accounts receivable”, which might be puzzling. In uLaw, this is just an everyday issuing of an invoice. The procedure is automated within a few short clicks of a button.
Debiting trust? Sometimes this kind of accounting lingo is all it takes to raise a few eyebrows among experienced litigators and paralegals. However within uLawPractice, this process is a benign and extremely easy trust transfer.
Start your free trial today and let us know it works for you.