Buying equipment and supplies for a law firm
New lawyers shopping for their firm reach for the wrong list. They price desks, a leather chair, and a fax machine, then wonder why the practice feels chaotic. A law firm’s real equipment is software. The desk holds your coffee; Clio holds your calendar, your matters, your invoices, and your trust ledger. Get the tech stack right and a solo lawyer runs like a five-person office. Get it wrong and you will miss a statute of limitations because your “system” was a legal pad and your email inbox.
Buy the software stack first
Practice-management software is the single most important purchase you will make, and you should buy it before you sign a lease or order a chair. It is the spine that connects contacts, matters, calendar, documents, time entries, invoices, and the trust ledger so nothing falls through a crack. Clio is the market leader for solos and small firms; MyCase and PracticePanther are cheaper alternatives with similar bones. Whichever you pick, the point is that one system holds the whole matter, not five disconnected apps.
Around that spine you need four more tools. A legal-research subscription (Fastcase, often free through your state bar, or Westlaw and Lexis if your area demands them). An e-signature tool (DocuSign or the one built into Clio) so clients sign retainers and documents without driving in. Document assembly for your repeatable work (Clio Draft or Gavel) so the tenth will takes ten minutes. And encrypted email and file sharing, because attaching privileged documents to plain Gmail is a confidentiality problem waiting to happen.
| Tool | What it does | Typical monthly cost | Solo pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| Practice management | Matters, calendar, billing, trust ledger | $50 to $150 per user | Clio Manage |
| Legal research | Case law and statutes | $0 to $200 | Fastcase (bar) or Westlaw |
| E-signature | Retainers and docs signed remotely | $15 to $45 | DocuSign |
| Document assembly | Auto-draft repeatable documents | $30 to $100 | Clio Draft or Gavel |
| Encrypted email/storage | Confidential client comms | $6 to $20 per user | Google Workspace + encryption |
That is a working firm for roughly $150 to $400 a month, and it scales with you. The line-by-line startup budget, including these tools, lives in how much you need to start.
Before you subscribe, settle one real decision: cloud practice management (Clio, MyCase) versus old-school desktop software you install and own. For a new solo the answer is almost always cloud, but the tradeoff is worth understanding.
Cloud practice management vs desktop software
- You reach every matter from a laptop, a courthouse, or your phone, which is how a solo actually works.
- Backups, security patches, and updates are handled for you, so a dead laptop never means a lost case file.
- Low monthly cost with no big upfront license, and it scales seamlessly the day you add a paralegal.
Cloud practice management vs desktop software
- You pay every month forever instead of once, so over many years the subscription can cost more.
- Your data lives on a vendor’s servers, so you are trusting their security and their survival as a company.
- An internet outage can briefly lock you out, and exporting your data if you ever switch tools takes real effort.
The trust account is equipment, not paperwork
Every jurisdiction requires you to hold client money, retainers, settlement funds, filing-fee advances, in a separate IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account), never in your operating account and never mingled with your own cash. Treat this as a piece of equipment you install before you take a dollar, because the rules are strict and the enforcement is real. You open the IOLTA at a bank on your state bar’s approved list, and the interest flows to a legal-aid foundation, not to you.
The software half matters as much as the bank half. Your practice-management tool should record every deposit and disbursement against a specific client matter and let you reconcile the trust account monthly. Never let a client’s ledger go negative, which means spending one client’s money on another’s matter, and never move earned fees to your operating account before you have actually earned them and billed for them.
Hardware: business-grade, encrypted, boring
Your hardware list is short and unglamorous, and you should resist the urge to overspend here so you can afford the software above. A business-grade laptop with full-disk encryption turned on (a $900 to $1,500 machine), a second monitor because reviewing two documents side by side is a daily task, a fast duplex scanner for the paper the courts still generate (a Fujitsu ScanSnap runs about $400 to $600), and a reliable encrypted cloud backup. That is the core.
The fax machine you were about to buy can be a $10-a-month e-fax service, since some courts and agencies still demand a fax number. Skip the physical law library entirely; you will do all your research online. Furniture should be functional and, yes, ergonomic, because you will sit at this desk ten hours a day, but a $250 task chair from a good brand serves a solo as well as a $1,500 one. Spend the difference on the tools that bill.
Buy for the workflow, not the showroom
The trap in equipping a firm is buying for how a law office looks in your head, wood-paneled, book-lined, instead of for how the work actually flows. Match each purchase to a real task: intake, drafting, signing, billing, storing, reconciling. If a purchase does not make one of those steps faster or safer, it is decoration. Pricing your services around these tool costs is covered in setting prices and billing, and the same discipline keeps your margins healthy, as how much profit a firm makes explains.
Getting found is the part that decides everything
The best-equipped firm still needs a phone that rings. Two moves are free and worth doing this week: claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile, and ask your first satisfied clients for a review. Those reviews pull more first-time callers than any equipment you buy. The local playbook is in how to promote a law firm locally.
Then the high-stakes part. Your website is intake software, and the difference between one that books consultations and one that just sits there is invisible until you compare the numbers, plus attorney advertising has ethics rules a generic template will trip over. That is our work. To have the site handled, get a free video walkthrough. For SEO and paid ads run inside the rules, see our services. If you need the business plan first, start at expntl.com.
Frequently asked questions
What software does a solo law firm actually need?
At minimum: practice-management software like Clio to run matters, calendar, billing, and the trust ledger; a legal-research tool such as Fastcase (often free through your bar) or Westlaw; an e-signature tool like DocuSign; and encrypted email and storage. Document-assembly software is a strong add for anyone doing repeatable work like wills or LLC formations. That stack runs roughly $150 to $400 a month.
Do I really need a separate trust account?
Yes, in every jurisdiction. Client funds like retainers and settlement proceeds must sit in a separate IOLTA trust account, never mixed with your operating money. It is an ethics requirement, not a preference, and mishandling it is one of the most common causes of attorney discipline. Open it at a bank on your state bar’s approved list before you accept your first retainer.
Can I just use free tools and my personal laptop to save money?
You can start lean, but not at the cost of confidentiality. Client data belongs on an encrypted, business-grade device with a real backup, and privileged communications should not travel over plain consumer email. Most states now require reasonable safeguards for client information, so a free-tools-and-personal-laptop setup can create both a security risk and an ethics problem.
Is a physical law library worth buying?
No. Solos do essentially all research online through Fastcase, Westlaw, or Lexis, and a shelf of print reporters is expensive, goes stale, and takes space you are paying rent on. Spend that money on a research subscription and a fast scanner instead. The bookshelf is decoration, not equipment.
How much should I budget for furniture and office setup?
Keep it modest. A functional, ergonomic desk and task chair from a reputable brand can be had for a few hundred dollars each, and that serves a solo perfectly well. The temptation is to overspend on furniture that impresses no client who will ever see it, at the expense of the software and security that actually run the firm. Prioritize the tools that bill hours and protect client data.
