Before & after · The disbursement story
The case settled weeks ago. So why is everyone still waiting?
Disbursing one settled case takes the average personal injury firm about 23 days, a dozen staff touches, and a stack of paper checks. This page walks that flow end to end — and shows what the exact same case looks like as one approval on Disbo.
Part one · The old way
One settled case. Twenty-three days of moving paper.
This is the flow most personal injury firms run today, step for step. The client already won. The money is already in trust. Watch the days add up anyway.
Day 1 · The mailroom
The settlement check arrives by mail
The insurer's check lands in the firm's mailbox. Someone collects it and walks it to accounting. Until then, it's a piece of paper sitting in a box on the street.
Fraud-risk moment: Paper check sitting in a mailbox
Day 2 · Case software + accounting, by hand
Keyed in once. Then keyed in again.
An AR person opens the envelope, scans the check, and fills out the case tabs in the case management software. Because it doesn't talk to the accounting software, the same deposit gets typed a second time — two systems to keep matched from here on.
Day 7 · The legal team
Legal finalizes reductions
Provider and lien reductions get negotiated and signed off before anything can be paid. The money sits in trust while the emails go back and forth.
Day 9 · Finance
The settlement packet gets reviewed line by line
Finance checks the packet against the settlement sheet — every expense, every payee, every number — because one transposed digit here becomes a trust-account problem later.
Day 10 · Accounting software
A check is cut for every recipient
Client, providers, lienholders, fees — each one becomes its own check in the accounting software. A single case can mean six, eight, ten checks.
Day 11 · A desk, a printer, a stack
Printed, sorted, and matched by hand
The whole stack is printed. Someone sorts the checks by case and matches each one to its settlement statement. From here on it's paper — the #1 fraud target.
Fraud-risk moment: Printed checks on a desk
Day 12 · The legal team, again
Attorneys sign the stack
The matched stack goes back to legal. Attorneys sign checks — often without knowing what half of them are for.
Day 13 · The mailroom, again
Back into the mail — or the client drives in
Legal takes the checks to the mailroom, or the client schedules a trip to the office to pick theirs up in person.
Fraud-risk moment: Checks back in the mail
Day 18 · The postal service
Now the firm waits
Checks sit in the mail. Some get deposited quickly. Some sit in a drawer. Some never arrive at all — and every one of those is a phone call, a stop-payment, a reissue.
Fraud-risk moment: Uncashed and lost checks
Day 23 · Bank statement + two ledgers
Reconciliation closes the case — by hand
Weeks later, someone matches the bank statement to the trust ledger to the client sub-ledgers, one cleared check at a time, and the case is finally, officially done.
23 days
from check-in-hand to case closed
12+ staff touches
across mailroom, AR, finance, and legal
4 fraud-risk moments
every time the money is paper
The turn
None of those 23 days were legal work. They were logistics.
Every corner of the firm got software — intake, case management, billing. The one job that moves the actual money still runs on a checkbook. What if the entire stack of checks was a single approval instead?
Part two · The Disbo way
The same case. One approval. About two days.
Same settlement, same payees, same trust account. Here is everything that happens on Disbo — and everything that no longer has to.
The deposit matches itself to the case
The settlement lands in trust and Disbo pairs it with the right matter automatically. No envelope, no scanning, no double keying.
The settlement sheet fills itself in
Payees, amounts, fees, and lien payoffs pull straight from your case management software into one disbursement — nothing re-typed.
One approval pays every party
The attorney reviews the whole case on one screen and approves once, behind two-factor authentication. That's the only signature the case needs.
Recipients onboard themselves
Each payee gets an email, verifies their identity, and picks how they want to be paid — electronic transfer or a check mailed for them.
Reconciliation happens on its own
Every payment posts to the matter ledger as it clears, and three-way reconciliation runs continuously into your accounting software.
23 → 2 days
Zero paper checks. Zero re-keying. One staff touch instead of a dozen, and a bar-ready audit trail the whole way.
Try it yourself
Build your firm's flow — then watch it collapse
This is the same interactive simulator we walk through on live demos. Enter your firm's stack, adjust the steps to match how you actually disburse, then flip to the Disbo tab.
Before — your flow today
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Bring one real settled case to a 30-minute demo and we'll walk it through Disbo live — from funded to fully disbursed. $5.00 per disbursement, no subscription required.