I have really enjoyed from the very get- go that my firm can accept not just paper checks and not just ACH and wire transfers, but also payment via credit card. This is something that because I work for businesses, they’re generally large businesses, they’ve got accounts payable departments. You tend to think who would want to use a credit card or who would want to send a paper check? It’s all ACH these days. But I will tell you that over six years and over having sent thousands of invoices, it has been my experience that the more ways that you give people to pay you, the more quickly it is that you are likely to be paid. And I don’t get a ton of revenue through credit card payments, but it happens sometimes. And I do all that I can to encourage people to do ACH or e-checks, things of that nature.

Most practice management software, many CRMs have these kinds of solutions built in. And I would absolutely encourage you to accept every form of payment that you can. Yeah, it’s true that you lose a little bit of money to a credit card processing service, but if somebody is inclined to pay you right then and there and they get an email from you with your invoice and there’s a link that they can click and they could pull their credit card out of their pocket if they choose to do so to pay off an invoice, you don’t want to make them have to remember to do it when they get back to the office the next day. So I’d say that probably most of my payments come in via ACH and paper check, but there is absolutely no reason why. Every law firm shouldn’t have the ability to accept payments in every possible way, shape and form.

And there are a variety of benefits if you’re going to take retainer money to have some sort of a means of accepting electronic payments that is linked into your practice management software that is able to track some of those retainer dollars. And a lot of these legal payment processing solutions will give you this flexibility. So I would encourage you to not just think about paper checks. I would encourage you to take all methods of payment.