LeanLaw is cloud-based legal timekeeping and billing software with real-time two-way integration with QuickBooks Online, which allows you to create and send invoices, manage Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts (IOLTA), and process electronic receipt of payments through QuickBooks Payments. Our LeanLaw review covers its features in time and expense tracking, fixed-fee billing, and reporting.
Monthly prices for LeanLaw start at $50 per user. You can request a free two-week trial or personalized demo before buying the program. However, since LeanLaw is deeply integrated within QuickBooks Online, non-QuickBooks Online users may not fully utilize most of LeanLaw’s features. Hence, we especially recommend LeanLaw for QuickBooks Online users or those planning to get the platform. LeanLaw reviews from users are positive, with emphasis on its seamless integration with QuickBooks Online.
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Pros
- Offers full-featured accounting with QuickBooks Online integration
- Reconciles trust accounts automatically
- Has a user-friendly interface and a simple layout with no unnecessary features
- Is more affordable than most similar programs
- Offers plenty of insight tools on its Reports page
- Provides free online masterclasses that discuss features in detail
Cons
- Requires a separate subscription to QuickBooks Online to perform general accounting tasks
- Has advanced reporting only in the higher plan
- Lacks a customer relationship management (CRM) system and client intake forms
- Lacks case and matter management features
Do you need something different? If you think you’ll be better served by general-purpose accounting software, then explore our evaluation of the best accounting software for small businesses.
LeanLaw Alternatives & Comparisons
LeanLaw Reviews From Users
Users Like | Users Dislike |
---|---|
Seamless QuickBooks Online integration | Problems when entering hours in decimal format, such as 0.75 |
Excellent time tracking and billing | Slightly high cost per user |
Easy to use | Lack of customization in reports |
Most users who gave a LeanLaw review online had positive things to say. Many are happy that the platform is simple and easy to use, while others are impressed with the responsive customer support team. However, some reviewers left negative comments on billing statements not being that customizable and some reports lacking drill-down options.
Overall, many are impressed with LeanLaw, as seen in its ratings on different review websites. We also see the complaints about the software as minor problems that LeanLaw can fix in future updates. In our expert opinion, we can vouch for the accuracy of user reviews.
- Capterra[1]: 4.7 out of 5 based on around 90 reviews
- Trustpilot[2]: 3.8 out of 5 based on about 25 reviews
LeanLaw Pricing
The LeanLaw pricing guide shows two packages. Most of its features are deeply integrated with QuickBooks Online, so we recommend that you connect QuickBooks Online before using LeanLaw.
- Core: $50 per month for up to four users; includes timekeeping, invoicing, and QuickBooks Online integration
- Pro: $65 per month for more than four users; includes everything in Core plus Legal Electronic Data Exchange Standard (LEDES) billing and advanced reporting.
You can try either of the two plans for free for 14 days. You may also schedule a personalized demo so that you can check out the product before buying.
All four QuickBooks Online plans integrate with LeanLaw. The ideal one for your business depends on your firm’s size and operational workflows, and it’s best to involve your accountant or bookkeeper in the decision-making. You can learn more about your different options through our QuickBooks Online plans comparison.
Here is the breakdown of QuickBooks Online pricing:
- Simple Start: $30 per month for one user
- Essentials: $60 per month for up to three users
- Plus: $90 per month for up to five users
- Advanced: $200 per month for up to 25 users
New users can choose between 50% off for three months or a 30-day free trial. Read our review of QuickBooks Online to see if you can leverage it along with your LeanLaw account.
LeanLaw vs Competitors
We compare LeanLaw with TimeSolv and CARET Legal. In our evaluation, we recommend LeanLaw plus QuickBooks Online and TimeSolv plus Xero.
LeanLaw vs Competitors
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CARET Legal Starts at $79 per month, billed annually
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TimeSolv Starts at $43.95 per user per month
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LeanLaw Starts at $50 per user per month
LeanLaw is great software for law firms using QuickBooks Online. LeanLaw fills in the limitations of QuickBooks Online in legal accounting, and with its two-way sync, it makes it easier for users to input data between the two platforms.
For practice management, TimeSolv takes the lead—but not by a huge gap. All three software in our comparison above have great but not robust practice management features. Besides that, all three are well-received to customers in terms of user reviews, and we agree that each deserves these ratings.
In ease of use, we give the win to CARET Legal because it doesn’t require third-party accounting software integration, which also means more cost savings. However, if you’re an existing QuickBooks Online user, LeanLaw is worth the additional cost because of its deep integration with QuickBooks Online.
LeanLaw Accounting Features
LeanLaw helps you transform QuickBooks Online to fit the needs of your legal practice. It adds timekeeping, billing, invoicing, and trust accounting features that are particularly useful for law firms and practicing attorneys. In our evaluation, we rated LeanLaw’s accounting features assuming it is integrated with QuickBooks Online, which we recommend.
LeanLaw’s dashboard provides quick access to the most commonly used features, including a calendar with timers, recorded time entries, expenses, billing, clients, and matter management. You can also access different reports, including reports by client and matter, reports by responsible lawyer, and other accounting reports.
LeanLaw’s dashboard
While the simple dashboard may appeal to new law firms and practitioners, more established law companies with multiple clients and heavy projects might look for a more comprehensive alternative. For instance, PCLaw has a more robust dashboard, including dashboards for managing clients and law practices and for viewing recent activities. Also, unlike most similar programs, LeanLaw has no document management feature.
LeanLaw’s unique strength is its deep integration with QuickBooks Online, which not only simplifies your legal accounting but also your legal billing workflow. Enter your time in LeanLaw, and it’ll be pushed to invoicing automatically and then straight to your QuickBooks Online account. With QuickBooks Online plus LeanLaw, you won’t be dealing with two sets of books as data is always in sync. You can connect LeanLaw to any QuickBooks Online account.
LeanLaw follows LEDES and American Bar Association (ABA) standards for billing and invoicing clients. You can add standard litigation, patent/intellectual property, and bankruptcy codes to your billings to ensure that they’re compliant with LEDES and ABA standards. Electronic invoices are then generated automatically and submitted to LEDES billing systems, including Legal Tracker, eCounsel, Lawtrac, and CounselLink.
Once a new time entry is created, it goes to the Ready To Bill tab under the Billing section automatically. From the Ready to Bill tab, you need to pick a client or matter to bill and then click on the arrow on the left side, which will then lead you to the screen where you can edit and format your invoice. Click Prepare Invoice, and you’ll be redirected to the Draft Invoice screen.
From the Draft Invoice screen, you can make adjustments to your invoice, including the description, time, and billed amount. Once you’re happy with the invoice, click on Create Draft Invoice. Your invoice will then move to the Drafts tab for approval. Once approved, select Submit to QuickBooks. The invoice will go to QuickBooks Online automatically and is ready to be sent to the client. You can revert your invoice to Drafts if you need to make some additional changes.
The GIF below shows the step-by-step process of billing and invoicing clients from LeanLaw to QuickBooks Online.
Invoicing workflow from LeanLaw to QuickBooks Online
You can choose to enter expenses either in your LeanLaw or QuickBooks Online account. Whichever method you choose, data is synced automatically between the two. LeanLaw also allows you to attach invoices directly to your expenses and tag the client to ensure that they’re always up to date.
Add Expense form in LeanLaw
To enter an expense in LeanLaw from the web dashboard, go to the Expenses tab, click on the +Create Expense button on the far left side of the screen, and then provide the required information on the Add Expense form. Click Save to record the expense.
LeanLaw has a special program that matches legal firms to QuickBooks ProAdvisors, who are accountants who have passed a certification exam from Intuit, demonstrating proficiency with QuickBooks. LeanLaw provides the necessary support to help law firms find QuickBooks ProAdvisors who are also proficient in LeanLaw. Contact LeanLaw to be matched with a ProAdvisor.
LeanLaw Practice Management Features
LeanLaw performs well in this criteria of our evaluation. Its trust accounting features work perfectly with QuickBooks Online. Moreover, LeanLaw’s timekeeping features are also outstanding as it lets users track time and plan via the time tracker and calendar feature. However, we discovered that LeanLaw doesn’t have a document management system, client portal, or matter management. These missing features had an impact on LeanLaw’s score, but overall, it’s still a worthy contender among other legal accounting software.
LeanLaw’s built-in trust accounting can be integrated into the user’s legal invoicing workflow. This makes it easier for you to make legal trust deposits and pay invoices straight from your client’s trust accounts. These trust transactions are then synced automatically with QuickBooks Online, eliminating manual data entry.
While the accounting is done in QuickBooks, the real-time two-way sync between QuickBooks and LeanLaw allows LeanLaw to pull the account balances and display the reconciled trust balances. You can view all of your funds held in trust from the Billing tab.
LeanLaw Funds Held in Trust screen in LeanLaw (Source: LeanLaw)
The amounts displayed in a column with the QuickBooks logo are pulled directly from the QuickBooks ledgers for both the bank accounts and related liability accounts. Therefore, you can see that your accounting records agree with your billing records easily and that all trust accounts are reconciled.
The trust balances pulled from QuickBooks can also be viewed within LeanLaw in a report format and even added to your client’s invoice, so they’ll know the full status of their account. LeanLaw has created a video to help explain its trust accounting process further.
To help you bill clients properly, LeanLaw allows you to track hours in multiple ways, including a time tracker mobile app, calendar view with timers, and a web app pop-up. These tools help you check if there are gaps in your billable hours so that they can be remedied immediately. Bulk time entry is also included in all LeanLaw subscriptions.
From the web dashboard, you can track time using the timer or by manually entering your working hours. To track time using the timer, go to the Calendar tab, and click on the Start New Timer button located below the calendar.
Starting a new timer in LeanLaw
Another option is to enter the time you’ve worked using worksheets manually. To do this, select the Time Entries tab, and enter the number of hours you worked for a certain client and matter. All time entries recorded can be tracked on the Time Entries page.
Recorded working hours can be tracked on the Time Entries tab Billing & Invoicing
With LeanLaw plus QuickBooks Online, you can choose between accounting by client or matter. You may want to pick client accounting if you need to add time or expenses from multiple matters to the same invoice. Meanwhile, we recommend matter accounting if you need to track trust funds separately for each matter. LeanLaw uses client-based accounting by default, but you can change it anytime from the QuickBooks tab in LeanLaw.
Another thing we like about LeanLaw is its comprehensive reporting feature. From the Reports page, you’ll find different legal-specific reports that are grouped into different categories, such as by client and matter, by user, and by practice area.
Reporting page in LeanLaw
Available reports include time and expense, client, timekeeper, and lawyer compensation. With LeanLaw, you can drill down into reports to get deeper insights into the financial standing of your law firm.
For instance, instead of checking your monthly invoice payments received, you can delve into specific details, such as revenue by attorney, revenue from a client, revenue by practice area, or revenue allocated to originating attorneys. Additionally, you can run compensation reports, which can help you calculate and track how much of your income is being allocated to users in your firm within a certain period.
LeanLaw Ease of Use
LeanLaw has a detailed knowledge base, which is a big plus in our evaluation. However, users can contact support only via live chat or email—there is no phone support and chatbot, which are major reasons why LeanLaw’s score took a hit.
Another big detractor from the ease of use score is LeanLaw requires a QuickBooks integration in order to be used for accounting. This definitely makes the system a little harder to set up, but once up and running we don’t see the integration as a problem.
Its interface is easy and simple to use. It also supports new users in many ways. For instance, after creating a new time entry, an automated popup appears, suggesting you try another relevant task, such as creating an invoice.
To fully leverage the platform, you should be familiar with QuickBooks. If you need help learning QuickBooks Online, check out our free QuickBooks Online tutorials.
How We Evaluated LeanLaw
As part of our roundup of the best law firm accounting software, we evaluated LeanLaw across four different criteria:
10% of Overall Score
25% of Overall Score
A good legal accounting software must-have features that enable law firms to manage invoices, bills, and payments. It must have adequate accounts receivable, accounts payable, and banking functions to manage cash flow, revenues, and expenses.
25% of Overall Score
20% of Overall Score
In evaluating user reviews, we looked at user review websites and checked reliable feedback. We weighed the positive and negative comments and assessed if the complaints were indeed present problems of the provider.
20% of Overall Score
The overarching goal of ease of use is to give users a smooth and easy experience in using the software. This involves an outstanding interface, multiple customer support channels, and a detailed knowledge base. We awarded a higher ease-of-use score to all-in-one software that doesn’t require an accounting integration.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, you can, as LeanLaw has built-in accounting features, like legal billing, time-keeping, and invoicing. However, we recommend the QuickBooks Online integration to make it a complete double-entry bookkeeping system.
Yes, it is. In addition to being a cloud-based software, it has a very minimalistic design and user interface that’s easy to navigate.
Yes, it integrates with any of the QuickBooks Online plans—from Simple Start to Advanced. Our comparison of QuickBooks Online plans can help you select the right plan that suits your needs.
Bottom Line
LeanLaw isn’t as robust as other law accounting software like PCLaw and CosmoLex, but it can be a powerful solution for your legal time tracking and billing needs. If you can afford the additional cost, you can convert LeanLaw into terrific accounting and invoicing software by integrating it with QuickBooks Online. There are other legal practice management applications that integrate with QuickBooks, but we believe that LeanLaw and QuickBooks Online are an ideal match.