Trust Account Compliance, In Design.
This educational roadmap outlines illustrative concepts for jurisdiction-specific trust-account controls, review alerts, and audit documentation. These capabilities are planned and not currently live; book a demo to discuss the roadmap.
The Obligation
Managing partners and accounting teams must ensure every trust transaction strictly adheres to the ethical rules established by their state bar.
The Friction
Rules vary wildly by state. Navigating prompt-disbursement, commingling, and sufficient-funds rules manually requires constant vigilance and paperwork.
The Disbo Standard
The planned Disbo workflow is a design concept for applying jurisdiction-specific controls, surfacing items for review, and recording actions in an audit log; it is not currently live.
Core Capabilities
50-State Rules Engine
Planned roadmap concept for bringing jurisdiction-specific IOLTA rules into the platform; not currently live.
Immutable Audit Logs
Planned roadmap concept for time-stamped action records that reviewers could use to trace transaction history; not currently live.
Negative Balance Protection
Planned roadmap concept for flagging a disbursement that could overdraw a client's sub-ledger before submission; not currently live.
Audit Packets
Planned roadmap concept for exporting organized transaction records and supporting documentation for compliance reviews; not currently live.
Frequently Asked Questions
What IOLTA compliance rules is Disbo planning to address?
Disbo's planned roadmap explores jurisdiction-specific IOLTA workflow concepts for all 50 states plus D.C., such as reconciliation deadlines, record-keeping requirements, client notification obligations, interest remittance rules, and trust-account maintenance standards. These concepts are in design, not currently live, and firms remain responsible for reviewing requirements with their legal and accounting advisors.
How is the planned immutable audit trail intended to work?
The planned audit-trail concept would consider recording actions with timestamps and user attribution, including deposits, withdrawals, transfers, approvals, and modifications. It is an illustrative design, not a live feature or a representation of records that auditors can currently rely on.
How is Disbo planning to approach multi-state compliance?
The planned roadmap considers using a matter's assigned jurisdiction to organize relevant reconciliation deadlines, record-retention periods, and reporting requirements in one workflow. This is an in-design concept, not currently live. Firms remain responsible for confirming applicable rules and reviewing their compliance process with legal and accounting advisors.
How might the planned roadmap address a negative trust balance?
The planned roadmap includes an illustrative concept for reviewing available balances before a withdrawal or disbursement and flagging a potential client-ledger shortage. This capability is in design and not currently live; it does not currently block transactions or send shortage notifications.
What is the planned approach to preparing for an audit?
The planned roadmap includes an illustrative audit-package concept that could organize client ledgers, three-way reconciliation reports, transaction histories, and supporting documentation by selected date range and accounts. It is not currently live, and no preparation time or audit outcome is represented.