Disclosure: DROZlegal publishes this guide and builds the trust-accounting tools described below, alongside the third-party platforms it's compared against. This article is general information about Ontario law-firm trust accounting, not legal advice, and does not create a solicitor-client relationship; it reflects By-Law 9 and publicly available vendor research as of September 28, 2026.
The five jobs trust accounting software actually has to do
"Trust accounting" sounds like a single feature. It isn't. A firm shopping in this category is really evaluating five separate jobs, and a lot of general-purpose practice-management tools handle only the first one well.
| Job | What has to happen | What to check in the software |
|---|---|---|
| Three-way reconciliation | Bank balance, book balance, and the sum of every client trust ledger must match — every time, not just at year-end | Automated, continuous reconciliation, not a manual monthly spreadsheet exercise |
| Client trust ledgers | Every dollar in or out of trust is tied to a specific client and matter, with no commingling | Hard structural separation between trust and general/operating accounts |
| The $7,500 cash-retainer guardrail | Cash received on one client matter can never exceed $7,500 in aggregate, across all deposits | An enforced aggregate limit per matter, not a per-transaction check that misses repeated smaller deposits |
| Form 9A / 9C reporting | Trust transfer requisitions and closing statements need to be produced in the LSO's own format | Draft generation from real ledger data, reviewed and filed by a lawyer — not an automated submission |
| Spot-audit readiness | Produce a clean reconciliation and ledger history on demand, not after a scramble | Reports available at any time, not only at a scheduled close |
Treat that table as the spine of this guide. For the compliance rules themselves — what By-Law 9 actually requires and how firms commonly fail a spot audit without any fraud involved — see our dedicated LSO By-Law 9 trust accounting guide. This piece compares the software.
Why the $7,500 cash guardrail is the sharpest test of a platform
Most trust-accounting marketing talks about reconciliation in the abstract. The cash-retainer cap is a good test because it's concrete and easy to check yourself on a demo call: ask whether the limit is enforced as a running total across every cash deposit on a matter, or only flagged if a single deposit alone exceeds $7,500. A firm that takes $3,000 in cash three separate times on the same file has breached the cap the same as one that took $9,000 once — software that only checks single transactions misses this entirely.
This is also where "AI-powered" claims deserve real scrutiny. Trust accounting is fundamentally a deterministic, rules-based problem — a reconciliation either balances or it doesn't, and a cap is either breached or it isn't. A vendor describing an AI model as making that determination, rather than exact arithmetic against stored records, is describing a probabilistic answer to a question that needs a certain one.
A genuine finding worth knowing before you shortlist anyone: PCLaw is being sunset
PCLaw has been a default trust-accounting choice for Canadian firms for decades. That's changing. Per PCLaw's own support community pages, support for certain PCLaw and Time Matters versions ended December 31, 2025, and the vendor's own materials have directed customers toward LEAP as a migration path rather than continuing PCLaw's own development. For a firm currently running its trust accounting on PCLaw, this isn't a reason to panic, but it is a reason to confirm directly with the vendor exactly which version you're on, what support remains, and what a migration timeline would look like — before a support gap becomes a compliance gap.
Vendor comparison
Pricing below reflects each vendor's own current pricing page where one is published, and a named third-party pricing tracker where it isn't — verify directly before budgeting, since quote-gated pricing changes without notice, and several of these vendors repriced during 2026.
| Platform | Built for | $7,500 cash-cap enforcement | Notes | Starting price (2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CosmoLex | US-founded all-in-one practice management & accounting | General trust/IOLTA compliance tooling, not Ontario-specific | Repriced during 2026; tiers reported vary by source | ~$89–129/user/mo depending on tier (third-party reported, verify current tier directly) |
| PCLaw | Legacy Canadian practice management & trust accounting | Built-in for supported versions | Support for certain versions ended Dec 31, 2025; vendor steering customers to LEAP | Not published; confirm version support status directly |
| ESILAW 360 | Canadian practice management & accounting (Dye & Durham-owned) | Built-in, Canadian-specific | No public pricing; quote-gated since the Dye & Durham acquisition | Custom quote |
| Actionstep Legal Accounting (formerly Soluno) | North America-only legal accounting platform | Built-in trust accounting | Rebranded after Actionstep's acquisition of Soluno | ~$71–79/license/mo starting (third-party reported); ultimately quote-based per its own pricing page |
| DROZlegal | Full practice-automation platform; trust accounting is one module | Yes — aggregate per-matter cap, default-ON, enforced from both the ledger and invoicing paths | Three-way reconciliation, Form 9A/9C draft generation; compute-only, no AI touches money | See pricing |
No vendor above, DROZlegal included, does every job in the first table equally well. ESILAW and PCLaw were both built specifically for the Canadian market's trust-accounting rules; CosmoLex and Actionstep Legal Accounting bring broader all-in-one practice management with trust accounting as one part of it. For the wider field of Canadian practice-management options beyond the trust-accounting-specific comparison above, see our legal practice management software guide for Canada and our roundup of Clio alternatives.
Where DROZlegal's trust module actually stands — the honest maturity check
This is the section most vendor pitches skip. Per DROZlegal's own capability inventory, trust accounting is live in production, built around three-way reconciliation, client trust ledgers, and overdraft/commingling safeguards, with the cash-retainer guardrail as one of only a handful of settings that default ON rather than requiring a firm to switch it on itself.
- Form 9A and 9C are draft-only. The system generates a draft electronic trust transfer requisition or closing statement from real ledger data; a lawyer reviews and files it. Nothing submits itself.
- Compute-only by design. No AI model touches money or initiates a transfer — reconciliation and the cash-cap check run on deterministic arithmetic against stored records, not a language model's judgment.
- The valuable-property record isn't built yet. It's planned, not live — don't take a "we handle valuable property" claim from any vendor, DROZlegal included, at face value without confirming it's actually shipped.
- No bank-feed integration yet. Reconciliation runs against records entered into the system, not an automatic live bank feed.
Ask any vendor in this category, DROZlegal included, to show you the gap list before the feature list. A platform that only shows the polished demo ledger is asking you to trust a claim it hasn't shown you the edges of.
A buyer's framework — the questions to ask before you commit
Whatever platform your firm is evaluating, these separate a real answer from a feature list:
- Is the $7,500 cash cap enforced as a running aggregate, or only per transaction? A per-transaction check misses a client who deposits cash in smaller increments.
- Does reconciliation run on deterministic logic, or does the vendor describe AI "assisting" with it? A balance either matches or it doesn't — that's not a probabilistic question.
- Can the software produce a clean reconciliation report on demand, not just at a scheduled close? A spot audit doesn't wait for your firm's normal reporting cycle.
- If you're on PCLaw or another legacy product, what's your actual support and migration timeline? Confirm directly with the vendor rather than assuming your version is unaffected.
- Does anything in the trust workflow file, transfer, or disburse money without a human clicking approve? If a vendor describes autonomous trust transfers, that claim is worth pressing on hard.
Trust accounting is one module inside a wider platform. For the full roster of DROZlegal's named, task-scoped agents across every practice area, see the AI Agents page. For the compliance rules behind all of this — what By-Law 9 requires and how firms typically fail a spot audit — see our LSO By-Law 9 trust accounting guide. If the propose-then-approve model above is new to you, the Lawyer AI Academy guide walks through the same discipline across every practice area on the platform.
Frequently asked questions
Does By-Law 9 require a specific software vendor? No. By-Law 9 sets requirements for trust records, reconciliation, and reporting — it doesn't mandate any particular product. A firm could technically comply with a well-run manual system, but nearly every LSO spot-audit failure traces back to a process that depended on someone remembering a step rather than software structurally enforcing it.
Is PCLaw still a safe choice for a new Ontario firm in 2026? Firms should verify directly with the vendor before committing. Support for certain PCLaw versions is ending, and the vendor's own support materials have pointed customers toward LEAP as a migration path — worth confirming your specific version's status and timeline before renewing or onboarding new staff on it.
Can AI touch trust money safely? Trust accounting itself should stay compute-only — deterministic reconciliation and reporting logic, never an AI system initiating a transfer or disbursement. Any vendor whose AI features extend to moving trust money on their own is worth pressing hard on exactly what "AI-assisted" means in that context.