- Advance fees generally belong in trust until earned — not in the operating account.
- Government filing fees and client funds must be handled and tracked precisely.
- Sloppy trust accounting is a bar-complaint risk, independent of case quality.
Trust accounting is not glamorous, and it is not optional. Immigration practice is full of money that is not yet the firm's: advance fees paid before work is done, funds held for government filing costs, amounts collected for steps not yet reached. Mishandling that money is one of the few mistakes that can put a license at risk regardless of how well the underlying cases are run.
The Core Distinction
The principle behind trust accounting is simple even when the rules are detailed: money that has not been earned is the client's, not the firm's, and it has to be kept separate until it is earned. An advance fee paid for future work generally sits in trust and moves to operating only as the work is actually performed. Filing fees collected for the government are held and paid, not commingled with revenue.
Where Firms Slip High Risk
The common failures are mundane and serious: depositing advance fees straight into operating, drawing against unearned funds, losing track of which client's money is which, or failing to keep records that reconcile. None of these requires bad intent. A busy practice that never built disciplined trust procedures can drift into a violation without anyone deciding to do anything wrong.
"Trust accounting failures rarely come from dishonesty. They come from not having a system — and the consequences do not care which."
Build the Discipline In
The protection is procedure: clear rules for where money goes, when funds are earned and can be moved, how filing costs are tracked, and regular reconciliation. Tie the money to the matter so you always know whose funds you hold and why. Trust accounting is a place where a small, consistent system prevents a large, career-defining problem.
Keep the money clean.
GentleCase ties fees and filing costs to each matter so you can see what is held, earned, and owed per case — the visibility good trust discipline depends on. Book a walkthrough.
