How we choose, order and check the vendors on this site

Every figure on this site starts on the vendor’s own pages and carries one of three labels: Published, Estimate or Not published. Vendors are listed in an order set by a fixed cost rule, and no vendor can pay to change it.

Which vendors are included

At launch the site covers nine products that sell accounting, billing, trust accounting, time tracking or payment processing to US law firms: Clio, CosmoLex, LawPay, LeanLaw, MyCase, PracticePanther, QuickBooks Online, Smokeball and TimeSolv. QuickBooks Online is a general accounting product. It is included because several of the legal products here connect to it for their general ledger.

The site’s owner set the launch list; it is not a survey of the whole market. More vendors are planned, each researched the same way before it appears. No vendor can pay to be included or left out.

A vendor appears in a comparison table only if its own documentation shows that the product does that table’s job, either included or sold as an extra. The law firm accounting software tables are stricter: trust accounting, billing and any QuickBooks Online or Xero connection must be part of the product, and only the general ledger may be sold as an extra. Partial or unclear support never qualifies, and a vendor that does not qualify is left out of the table, not listed at the bottom. This is why QuickBooks Online, whose trust accounting support is only partial, is discussed but not ranked on the law firm accounting software comparison.

What each table requires

• Law firm accounting software (the home page): trust accounting and billing, plus a general ledger, either built in or sold as an extra, or a connection to QuickBooks Online or Xero.
• Accounting software for small and solo law firms: the same as the home page, for vendors that sell to solo lawyers or small firms.
• Legal billing software: billing.
• Trust accounting software: trust accounting.
• Legal time tracking software: time tracking.
• Practice management: practice management.
• Law firm software: practice management, plus a general ledger or an integration with QuickBooks Online or Xero.
• Law firm bookkeeping: a general ledger.
• Law firm payment processing: built-in payment processing.

How vendors are ordered

Vendors are ordered by what a five-user firm would pay a year on the vendor’s cheapest plan that has a published price and includes what the table requires, lowest first. Where a plan can only be bought together with another plan, the cheapest published required plan is added to the cost, and the table says so. At equal cost, exact prices come before “from” prices, then vendors are listed alphabetically. Vendors that do not publish a price for a qualifying plan follow, in alphabetical order.

Accounting tables count a working setup

The tables that require a general ledger (the home page, small and solo firms, bookkeeping and law firm software) cost a working setup for the whole team: the legal product plus the general ledger it needs, not the legal product alone.

• If the plan has a general ledger built in, the cost is the plan.
• If the vendor sells its ledger as an extra, priced per person, the cost adds it for one person: the one who keeps the books. If the extra must be bought for every user, it is added for every user.
• If the ledger is kept in QuickBooks Online, the cost adds the cheapest QuickBooks Online plan that the vendor’s own documentation says its integration works with, for one accounting user, because usually only the bookkeeper logs in to QuickBooks. We do not assume a plan works when the vendor does not say so: if we cannot find where a vendor names the QuickBooks Online plans it supports, its setup cost is not worked out, and it is listed after the vendors that can be costed.

Where a vendor can be bought more than one way, its cheapest published setup sets its position, and the table names that setup, for example a legal plan plus QuickBooks Online Simple Start for one accounting user. Billing, trust accounting, time tracking and practice management tables cost the plan alone.

Two tables use a different measure:

• Small and solo firms are ordered by the annual cost for one user, with the cost for five users shown alongside.
• Payment processing is ordered by the annual cost of taking twenty-five thousand dollars a month in twenty-five credit card payments into the firm’s operating account. That cost is the payment product’s own monthly fees plus its published card rate. Smaller and larger scenarios are shown alongside. A practice management subscription that the payment product needs is shown in its own column, not added. Processors that do not publish a card rate follow, in alphabetical order.

Where a vendor publishes both an annual-billing and a monthly-billing price, the cost uses the annual one and shows the monthly one beside it. Where it publishes only one, we use that. Introductory discounts, payment fees and optional extras are never added; the only extra counted is a general ledger that a table requires, and the table says so. One-off fees, such as onboarding, are shown separately as a first-year cost.

Sponsorship and affiliate links play no part in the order. The code that sets the order cannot see sponsor or affiliate data. Every build of the site runs an automated test: it builds the site again with all sponsor and affiliate data changed, compares every page, and fails if the order or wording changes anywhere other than the sponsor block, the paid-link notice and the vendor links themselves.

The three price labels

• Published: the vendor shows the price to visitors on its own website, order form, app marketplace listing or official price list. We record the page, the date we read it, the exact plan name and the billing term. Where a vendor states only a starting price, we show it as “from”.
• Estimate: the vendor does not publish the price, but at least three independent, dated pieces of public evidence support a range. An estimate is always a range, and its method is shown beside it. Our page on how we estimate prices vendors do not publish explains the method. At present, no price on the site is an estimate.
• Not published: the vendor gives no price, and there is too little public evidence for a range. We note what we checked.

How prices are found

• Vendor sources first. We read the vendor’s pricing page, plan comparison, terms of service, help center, app marketplace listings and any public order form.
• Archived copies of the vendor’s own pages. Some vendor sites block automated readers. We never bypass those checks. Instead we may use an archived copy of the vendor’s own page from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. A copy captured no more than 45 days before we read it counts as Published, and the price then shows the capture date as its last-verified date. Older copies count only as history.
• Only what a visitor can see counts. A price that appears only in a page’s code or hidden data is never used. A price shown when a visitor uses a control on the page, such as a switch between monthly and yearly billing, does count.
• The vendor’s own pages come first. Where another source says something different, we go with what the vendor says. Where a vendor’s own pages differ from each other, we follow its pricing page.
• No shortcuts. We do not log in to private areas, request quotes under a false identity or copy review text. We do not repeat a review site’s figure without checking it on the vendor’s own page.

Every price on a page is drawn from one record of the data. No figure is typed into a page by hand, so a price corrected once is corrected everywhere it appears.

How often prices are checked

Prices are re-checked over time, and every page that shows prices says when they were last verified: the newest date the figure itself was seen on the vendor’s page or an archived copy, not the date the page was built.

Trust accounting rules

Statements about client trust accounts, IOLTA and reconciliation cite the rule they rest on, with a link and the date we read it. For example, the American Bar Association’s model rule says client and third-party property must be kept separate from the lawyer’s own property (ABA Model Rule 1.15(a) [1]). That is a model rule. Each state sets its own, so our guides cite the state rule where it matters and never say one rule applies everywhere. Rules come from official sources: the ABA, state bars and state courts. Our guides explain; they are not legal or accounting advice.

How the research is done

We work from vendors’ public pages, archived copies of those pages and the official texts of the rules, and record every source with the date it was read. Nothing is invented and every figure has a source. No product has been tested by hand: this is desk research from public documentation.

Corrections

If a price has changed or we have something wrong, tell us through the contact form, with a link to the vendor page if you have one. Read who runs this site and our disclosure of ownership and how the site makes money.