What trust account obligations mean for your technology stack register

Trust accounting sits in a different category to the rest of the firm's technology. The obligations sit with the firm, but the systems supporting them still need to be documented, owned and reliable.

This is general operational practice, not legal advice — confirm your specific obligations with the New Zealand Law Society and your trust account supervisor.

Treat trust systems as top-tier critical

Whatever criticality scale you use, trust accounting should sit at the top of it, alongside practice management. That rating should drive real behaviour: shorter review cycles, tighter documentation, no casual changes.

What the register entry should hold

• Provider and product, plus the version or plan in use
• Named internal owner, and a named backup owner
• Supplier support contact and escalation path
• Contract reference, cost, renewal date and notice period
• Where records are held, and for how long
• Backup arrangement: what is backed up, how often, by whom
• Restore path: who invokes it, expected time to restore, when it was last tested

The last line is the one most firms can't answer. A backup you have never restored from is an assumption.

Renewal timing matters more here

Don't let a trust-related system lapse, auto-renew unexamined, or migrate during a reporting period. Diary the renewal well ahead of the notice deadline, and avoid scheduling changeovers near month-end or audit windows.

Document dependencies, not just the system

Trust accounting rarely stands alone. It usually depends on general accounting, the bank feed, identity and email, and the document store. If any of those fail, trust processes are affected. Record those relationships so the dependency is visible before an outage makes it obvious.

Keep an evidence trail

Record who reviewed what and when — access reviews, restore tests, supplier reviews, and the reasoning behind each decision. When someone asks how the firm manages its trust technology, the answer should be a record, not a recollection.

See also: how law firms can improve business continuity, and manage the register itself in AvenorOps.