Disbo Launches Settlement Disbursement Platform Built for Personal Injury Law Firms

SAN FRANCISCO — May 30, 2026 — Disbo today announced the general availability of its settlement disbursement and IOLTA compliance platform for personal injury law firms. The platform enables PI firms to calculate and distribute settlement proceeds to every party — clients, medical providers, co-counsel, and referral partners — from a single IOLTA trust account with one click, while the trust ledger reconciles automatically. Disbo is free for law firms and available immediately at disbo.com.

The Problem: PI Settlement Disbursement Is Still Manual

When a personal injury case settles, the law firm must divide the proceeds among multiple parties: the client, the attorney's contingency fee, medical providers who treated the client on a lien basis, co-counsel who referred the case, and sometimes government subrogation claims or Medicare liens. Every dollar must originate from an IOLTA trust account, tracked separately by client and by matter, with a complete paper trail that satisfies state bar audit requirements.

Despite this complexity, the vast majority of personal injury law firms manage the process with spreadsheets, paper checks, and manual ledger entries — the same tools they used thirty years ago. A single disbursement can take a paralegal several hours to calculate, execute, and verify. One misapplied payment, even one caught and corrected the same day, can trigger a state bar trust account audit. Early CTAPP-style audits in states that have adopted the program found deficiency rates of 83–89% in the areas Disbo automates.

The Solution: One Platform for the Entire Settlement Workflow

Disbo replaces the manual settlement disbursement workflow with a single platform that handles trust accounting, disbursement calculation, payment execution, lien tracking, and compliance reporting together. When a case settles, the law firm uploads the settlement sheet, reviews the automatically calculated allocations for each party, and approves the disbursement with a single click. Payments go out via ACH, wire, or check. The IOLTA trust ledger reconciles automatically.

The platform's three-way reconciliation engine simultaneously balances the client ledger, the matter ledger, and the trust account — the three records state bar auditors examine. Every transaction is tagged to a specific client matter, and disbursement histories are available on demand in the formats auditors request.

On the medical provider side, Disbo gives doctors and specialists a real-time payment portal where they can see exactly where a case stands and when a disbursement is expected. When funds are released, payments arrive electronically — eliminating the paper check cycle and the associated collection calls to the law firm.

“Personal injury law firms have been completely ignored by legal tech. Every practice management platform was built for hourly billing — not for the financial complexity of a contingency practice where a single case settlement might require ten simultaneous payments across clients, providers, co-counsel, and lien holders. We built Disbo because we spent a decade inside these firms and watched paralegals manually reconcile trust accounts every weekend. That problem is solvable with software, and it should have been solved years ago.”

Key Features

• Settlement Disbursements: Automatically calculate and distribute settlement proceeds to clients, co-counsel, medical providers, and referral partners from a single trust account with one approval.
• Three-Way Reconciliation: Every disbursement automatically reconciles the client ledger, the matter ledger, and the IOLTA trust account — eliminating end-of-month manual reconciliation.
• IOLTA Compliance: Trust accounting rules are enforced at the transaction level, with audit-ready records that satisfy state bar requirements and CTAPP-style reviews.
• Lien Negotiation: Track, negotiate, and resolve medical and government liens within the same platform, with full lien history attached to each matter.
• Referral Fee Management: Document split agreements, calculate referral fee allocations, and pay co-counsel electronically with 1099 reporting built in.
• Every Payment Rail: Firms can disburse by ACH, wire transfer, or check from a single interface, with payment status visible to all parties in real time.
• Provider Payment Portal: Medical providers get a real-time view of case status and payment timing — eliminating weekly "where's my check?" calls to the law firm.
• Audit-Ready Reporting: Generate trust account statements, disbursement reports, and lien ledgers on demand — formatted to meet state bar audit requirements.

Industry Context

The legal payments and IOLTA compliance market is under increasing regulatory pressure. Multiple states have adopted or are piloting trust account audit programs, and bar associations are expanding oversight of how law firms manage client funds. At the same time, the personal injury sector — which handles tens of billions of dollars in annual settlements — has been underserved by legal technology vendors who have historically focused on general-practice firms or criminal defense. Disbo is the first platform designed specifically for the financial operations of a plaintiff-side contingency practice, where every case involves multi-party disbursements, medical lien resolution, and IOLTA compliance obligations simultaneously.

Pricing & Availability

Disbo is free for law firms. Medical providers and other payees are charged $5 per disbursement received. The platform is available immediately for law firms to sign up at disbo.com. Disbo is currently accepting up to 300 founding member law firms into its early access program, which includes priority onboarding, dedicated implementation support, and a locked early-access pricing tier.