ABSTRACT
It may be logical to begin a chapter intended to provide an overview of the computerisation of the accounting function in a solicitor’s office by setting out the nature of computerised accounts, the essential and optional functions they may perform and how accounts for solicitors may differ from other accounts software. This follows below; meanwhile, assume that you are a fee earner in a solicitor’s practice and at the end of a busy week you decide to issue new bills and chase payment of outstanding bills. You may have an idea of the relevant files concerned but, before you can do either of these tasks, you need to identify specifically those files on which bills need to be issued and those clients who owe the business money. In the process, you decide to review the extent to which the firm is financing client disbursements and where necessary seek reimbursement from the relevant clients. You could trawl through all your files to identify the relevant clients. If your firm operates a manual accounting system, your only alternative will be for you to ask the accounts department to identify relevant outstanding bills and the disbursement balances on your behalf. It will take time to produce the required information-the reason you ask the accounts department is to avoid doing the manual research yourself. In such circumstances, it is unlikely that there will be a centralised record of the amount of work in progress accumulated on your files-calculating profit costs to bill individual clients would, in all likelihood, involve you in referring to individual current files.
