Billing software for small law firms: how to choose
Most small firms end up choosing between two kinds of product. A practice management suite (Clio, MyCase, PracticePanther, Smokeball or CosmoLex) runs the whole practice, with billing as one part of it. A billing-focused product (TimeSolv, LeanLaw or ModusBill) does time, invoices, payments and trust accounting well, and leaves calendars, documents and intake to other tools. Decide which kind you need first. Choosing a product is much easier after that.
ModusBill wrote this page, and ModusBill is one of the options on it. We have described every product by what its own vendor says it does, and we say who should choose something other than ModusBill. Confirm the details with each vendor before you decide.
Start with these questions
- The whole practice, or billing done well? If you want calendar, documents, intake and billing in one place, look at the suites. If you already manage cases simply, a focused billing product is usually less to learn and less to pay for.
- Do you hold client money? Then trust accounting is not optional: a ledger per client, protection against paying out money a client does not have, an audit trail that cannot be edited, and a monthly three-way reconciliation. See what three-way reconciliation involves.
- How will clients pay? Online card payment from the invoice saves weeks of chasing. If clients pay retainers by card, the processor must deposit the full amount into trust and take its fee from your operating account.
- Do any clients require LEDES? Insurers and corporate clients often reject anything else. If even one does, check the export properly. What a LEDES 1998B invoice must contain.
- Where are your books? QuickBooks Online, another ledger, or one built into the legal software. The answer rules some products in and others out.
- Do you bill clients in Spanish? Few products send the invoice, its email and the payment page in the client's language.
- What does the price really include? Per-user prices are easy to compare; which features sit on a higher plan, and what card processing costs, are not.
- Can you get your data in, and out? Ask how your current system's export is imported, and how you would export everything if you left.
Practice management suites
Billing is one module of a system that runs the whole practice.
Clio
The largest practice management platform for law firms: matters, calendaring, documents, client intake and a CRM, a wide integration marketplace, and billing, payments and trust accounting as part of the whole.
Suits: Firms that want one platform for the entire practice and expect to connect it to many other tools.
Check before you buy: Which capabilities are on the plan you are being quoted.
MyCase
An all-in-one practice management platform aimed at small firms: cases, calendar, documents, a client portal, billing, online payments and trust accounting.
Suits: Small firms that want one straightforward system for running cases and billing them.
Check before you buy: Which features sit on higher plans or are sold as add-ons.
PracticePanther
Practice management with billing, payments, trust accounting, client intake and workflow automation in one subscription.
Suits: Firms that want case management and intake automation alongside billing.
Check before you buy: Which plan includes the billing and trust features you need.
Smokeball
Practice management known for automatic time tracking: it records the work done in its matters, in Word and in Outlook and turns it into time entries. Billing covers hourly, fixed-fee, contingency and LEDES invoices, with trust accounting.
Suits: Firms that suspect billable time is going unrecorded and do much of their work in documents and email.
Check before you buy: How automatic capture fits the way your people actually work.
CosmoLex
Practice management with the firm's business accounting built in beside trust accounting and three-way reconciliation, so the firm can run without separate accounting software.
Suits: Firms that want their general ledger in the same system as their matters and billing.
Check before you buy: Whether you are ready to move your bookkeeping off the system your accountant uses now.
Billing-focused products
Time, invoices, payments and trust accounting, built as the whole product.
TimeSolv
Time and billing software for law firms with trust accounting, a QuickBooks integration and wide electronic billing support, including LEDES formats.
Suits: Firms whose main need is capturing time and producing invoices, including e-billing to insurers and corporate clients.
Check before you buy: Which practice management tools you would still need alongside it.
LeanLaw
Time, billing and trust accounting built on QuickBooks Online and synchronized with it in both directions. By its own description it does not do calendaring, docketing, intake or document management.
Suits: Firms whose books are in QuickBooks Online and whose bookkeeper wants to stay there.
Check before you buy: It depends on QuickBooks Online; it is not for firms on another ledger.
ModusBill
Billing and IOLTA trust accounting as the whole product: time, flat fees, expenses and retainers; trust ledgers that cannot go negative; monthly three-way reconciliation; invoices clients pay online; LEDES 1998B export; recurring billing; a two-way QuickBooks Online connection; and every client invoiced in English or Spanish. Every feature is in every plan, at one price per user.
Suits: Small firms that want billing and trust accounting done well, especially firms with Spanish-speaking clients.
Not for you if: It is not practice management (no calendar, documents, intake or CRM) and not a general ledger. It is also new: we are taking on our first firms through a pilot program.
At a glance
| Product | Kind | Strongest fit |
|---|---|---|
| Clio | Practice management suite | Firms that want one platform for the entire practice and expect to connect it to many other tools. |
| MyCase | Practice management suite | Small firms that want one straightforward system for running cases and billing them. |
| PracticePanther | Practice management suite | Firms that want case management and intake automation alongside billing. |
| Smokeball | Practice management suite | Firms that suspect billable time is going unrecorded and do much of their work in documents and email. |
| CosmoLex | Practice management suite | Firms that want their general ledger in the same system as their matters and billing. |
| TimeSolv | Billing-focused | Firms whose main need is capturing time and producing invoices, including e-billing to insurers and corporate clients. |
| LeanLaw | Billing-focused | Firms whose books are in QuickBooks Online and whose bookkeeper wants to stay there. |
| ModusBill | Billing-focused | Small firms that want billing and trust accounting done well, especially firms with Spanish-speaking clients. |
Questions to ask in every demo
A good vendor answers these by showing you, not by telling you.
- Show me what happens when I try to pay out more than a client has in trust.
- How is a trust mistake corrected: is the entry edited, or reversed with both entries kept?
- Show me a completed three-way reconciliation, and where it is kept afterwards.
- When a client pays a retainer by card, does the full amount land in the trust account?
- Which of the features in this demo are on the plan you are quoting me?
- If we leave, how do we export everything, and in what format?
- Can an invoice, its email and the payment page go to a client in Spanish?
- Does the system check a LEDES invoice before producing the file?
Where ModusBill fits
ModusBill is for the small firm that already knows how it runs its cases and wants the money side done properly: billing that captures every hour and flat fee, trust accounting that will stand up to a bar audit, invoices clients can pay online, and every client billed in English or Spanish. If you need a calendar, document management or intake in the same product, one of the suites above will serve you better. We compare ourselves in more detail with Clio, MyCase and PracticePanther, and each of those pages explains how to bring your data across.
Products other than ModusBill are described from what their vendors publicly advertise, checked in October 2026, and no prices are quoted because they change. Product names are trademarks of their owners. If anything here is out of date, tell us at sales@modusbill.com and we will correct it.
See it against your own matters
Thirty minutes with someone who knows professional billing — not a slide deck. Bring a real invoice and we will show you how it comes out of ModusBill. Then take 30 days with it, free.