Automated Disbursement Platform for Law Firms
An automated disbursement platform is software that takes a settled case and pays every party on the settlement statement — attorney fees, case costs, medical providers, lienholders, co-counsel, and the client — directly out of the firm's IOLTA or trust account, in one authorized run, with the reconciliation and audit trail generated automatically. It replaces the process most contingency-fee firms still use today: a paralegal assembling a stack of paper checks, an attorney signing them, and someone mailing them one at a time.
The distinction that matters when you're evaluating one: a payment processor moves a single payment. An automated disbursement platform handles the whole split — many payees, one settlement, one trust ledger that has to zero out at the end.
Last reviewed: August 2026
The problem these platforms exist to solve
A contingency-fee settlement is not one payment. It's typically eight to fifteen: the firm's fee, the case costs, each medical provider, each lienholder, sometimes co-counsel or a referring attorney, and the client's net. Every one of them comes out of the same client ledger inside the same IOLTA account, and that ledger has to land at exactly zero.
Done on paper, that means someone prints the checks, an attorney signs them, and they go in the mail. The failure modes are well documented and largely invisible until an audit.
Bar disciplinary officials describe the standard workflow the same way: an assistant writes out a stack of checks with payees, amounts, case numbers, and settlement sheets, hands the stack to the lawyer to look over and sign, and then mails them. The review is exactly as good as the attorney's attention on that particular afternoon.
The money that goes missing is rarely stolen. It is un-deposited. Outsourced bookkeepers who reconstruct law firm trust accounts report that roughly nine out of every ten unaccounted-for dollars in an IOLTA account trace back to medical-vendor payments, and that firms routinely carry uncashed checks that have gone unreconciled for years — sometimes fifteen or twenty.
That is the specific problem automation solves — not typing speed, but the gap between "we sent it" and "it arrived, it cleared, and the ledger closed."
How an automated disbursement run works
The mechanics are consistent across serious platforms, and worth understanding before a demo so you can tell a real one from a rebranded ACH button.
- 1
The settlement data arrives. Either the platform reads it from your case management system (so nobody re-keys it) or you enter the distribution once. This is the step where most implementations succeed or fail — a platform that can't read your settlement statement becomes a second system of record.
- 2
Payees are verified. Bank accounts get validated before money moves. Disbo uses Plaid, which covers 12,000+ financial institutions. Unverified payees are where duplicate-payment and wrong-account errors originate.
- 3
The platform runs its pre-flight checks. Zero-balance enforcement confirms the distribution actually sums to the amount held in trust for that client. Duplicate-payment prevention catches the provider who's already been paid on this file. These run before anything is authorized, not after.
- 4
The attorney authorizes. This is the control regulators care about most, and it should not be delegable to software. A disbursement platform should not be a black box you set up and let run — the lawyer has to authorize each disbursement.
- 5
Funds move — from your account, not through a vendor's. Ask this on every demo, in writing: does my client's money ever sit in an account you control? With Disbo the answer is no. Plaid and Modern Treasury move funds directly from the firm's IOLTA account to the recipient. Disbo never takes custody of client funds.
- 6
Reconciliation and records generate themselves. Three-way reconciliation between the bank, the trust ledger, and the client ledger, plus an audit-ready record of who authorized what, when, and to whom. ABA Model Rule 1.15 requires trust records be kept for five years after the representation ends — that record should be an export, not a reconstruction project.
What to look for when evaluating one
| Criterion | Why it matters | The question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| Custody model | A vendor holding client funds inserts a third party between your IOLTA and your client | “Does my money ever sit in an account you control?” |
| Authorization | Only a licensed attorney should be able to release trust funds | “Can a non-attorney send? Is the approval logged?” |
| Zero-balance enforcement | A trust overdraft is a bar complaint, not an accounting error | “Show me what happens when the distribution doesn't sum to the ledger” |
| Duplicate prevention | Provider double-payment is the most common real-world error | “Show me the duplicate catch” |
| Payout rails | Providers, lienholders, and clients want different things | “What are my options, and what does each cost and take?” |
| Live integrations | A roadmap is not a procurement fact | “Which of my systems is integrated today?” |
| Audit export | You need it under pressure, not at leisure | “Show me the export you'd hand a bar auditor” |
| Pricing model | Settlement volume is lumpy | “Is there a subscription I pay in a slow month?” |
Cost
There are two pricing shapes in this category.
Per-disbursement, no subscription suits firms with variable settlement volume — you pay nothing in a month with no settlements. Disbo prices this way: $3.96 per disbursement on Standard Pay (4-7 business days), $4.97 on Quick Pay (2-3 business days), and $6.97 for a paper check issued via Lob (7-10 business days). There is no monthly fee and no subscription. Enterprise pricing is custom, and a founding-member rate of $2.50 per disbursement, locked for life, is available to the first 300 firms.
Subscription plus per-item suits firms with steady, high-volume payment runs where a flat monthly cost is easier to budget.
For context on the alternative you're already paying for: the AFP Payments Cost Benchmarking Survey put the fully-loaded median cost of issuing a business check at $2.01 to $4.00, versus $0.26 to $0.50 for an ACH payment. A twelve-payee settlement is therefore already costing $24 to $48 in hard cost before any staff time, reissues, or reconciliation work. The savings from automation are real but they are mostly in the hours and the errors, not the sticker price — and any vendor telling you otherwise is overselling.
Where Disbo fits, and where it doesn't
Disbo is built for one specific job: a contingency-fee firm disbursing a settlement from an IOLTA account to many parties at once. Personal injury firms are the core, but the pattern holds for mass tort, employment, and consumer work. Live two-way integrations today include Filevine (the deepest), QuickBooks, QuickBooks Desktop, Clio, CASEpeer, Litify, and Neos. SmartAdvocate, MyCase, Smokeball, Needles, and AbacusLaw are on the roadmap and not yet available.
Disbo is not the right tool if:
- You need to accept client payments — Disbo is outbound only. Pair it with an acceptance provider.
- You need trust bookkeeping — a general ledger, chart of accounts, firm financials. Disbo reconciles the disbursements it executes; it is not your book of record.
- You're paying thousands of individual claimants in a class action or QSF — that's a different category with different KYC and OFAC requirements.
- Your case management system isn't integrated yet. Ask us directly rather than assuming.
Frequently asked questions
Software that pays every party on a settlement — attorney fees, case costs, medical providers, lienholders, and the client — directly from the firm's IOLTA or trust account in a single authorized run, and generates the reconciliation and audit trail automatically.
A payment processor is generally about money coming in from clients. A disbursement platform is about money going out of a trust account to multiple third parties at once, with trust-specific controls like zero-balance enforcement and three-way reconciliation. Some vendors do both; most do one well.
It depends entirely on the architecture, and you should confirm it in writing. A platform that moves funds directly from your trust account to the payee without taking custody keeps the firm in the position Model Rule 1.15 contemplates. Disbo never holds client funds. Trust rules vary by state. This is not legal advice.
With Disbo, only the attorney can authorize and send. Staff can prepare a disbursement run; the attorney releases it.
2-3 business days on Quick Pay, 4-7 on Standard Pay, and 7-10 for a mailed check. Roughly 80% of ACH volume settles in one banking day or less at the network level; the tier you choose determines what you actually get.
For some payees, yes. A number of medical providers, municipal lienholders, and court registries still require paper, and some clients prefer it. Disbo issues a check through Lob inside the same run, so the paper leg stays in the same reconciliation.
Bank details are verified through Plaid before funds move, which prevents most of it. Failures surface as a status on the disbursement rather than as a check that silently never gets deposited.
$3.96 to $6.97 per disbursement depending on speed and method, with no monthly fee or subscription. Founding-member rate is $2.50 per disbursement locked for life for the first 300 firms.
No. It reads settlement data from it. Confirm your specific system is integrated today before buying.
Related resources
This page is informational and is not legal advice; consult your state bar's trust accounting rules.