Setting up a lawyer's trust accounting procedures in Quickbooks is certainly doable. But if you are not an accounting whiz, you might be worried you missed something. There are other tools like GnuCash (free) or Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007. Earler this year, the Minnesota Bar Association announced the release of its Trust Accounting Guides that have previously only been available to Minnesota Bar lawyers. In the spirit of public service, all lawyers can now benefit from their step-by-step instructions contained in:

  • Keeping Client Trust Accounts with GnuCash 2.2.4;
  • Keeping Records for Client Trust Accounts Using Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007;
  • Using QuickBooks 6.0 for Lawyers’ Trust Accounting;
  • Trust Accounting with QuickBooks 2005 Professional;
  • Keeping Clients’ Trust Accounts with QuickBooks 2010 Professional

This blog post from the MSBA Practice Blog contains all of the details and a link to the download site. You do have to furnish an e-mail address so you can be notified of updates or changes. This is truly a great public service. So thanks to the MSBA!!

But that is not all! As noted in the blog post linked above, they are also giving away Minnesota Legal Ethics, a 400 page ebook treatise by William J. Wernz. You read correctly. They are giving it away for free for you to download. So let's all show the Minnesota State Bar Association our thanks by taking them up on their offer to download these great free resources.