← All work

A digital bank for lawyers, built around compliance.

Mismanaging a client trust account is the #1 reason lawyers are disciplined or disbarred. Nota solves that anxiety with a product — and a new line of business for M&T Bank.

Jump to results ↓
Nota platform shown on an iMac in a workspace — outstanding checks and matter-level activity in view.
01Nota is a reconciliation tool that enables lawyers to manage their trust accounts directly within their online banking experience. Photo credit: Jeff Richardson.
01The objective

M&T Bank was looking to create a differentiated business-banking product by starting with a high-value segment, but they weren’t sure where to start.

After speaking with hundreds of small businesses, we identified lawyers as a fast-growing segment with a real pain point to be solved: trust account management.

The problem: client funds are often mingled in lawyers' trust accounts, leading to three common compliance errors — losing track of client balances, borrowing funds from trust accounts, and overdrafting at the client level — illustrated with quotes from Len and Jay, solo lawyers, and Kim, a firm CFO. The result: mismanaging money in client accounts is the #1 reason lawyers are disciplined or disbarred.
02The problem — three common trust-account errors, in the words of the lawyers and finance leads we interviewed.
02What we did

The thesis was specific: if we can create a layer on top of a bank account to organize retainer accounts and automate reconciliation, we’ll reduce stress and eliminate the mismanagement of trust accounts for lawyers.

To test this thesis, we ran 33 in-depth interviews with solo and small-firm lawyers, office managers, and bookkeepers, plus 25+ M&T relationship managers. A national survey of 140+ lawyers, and consultations with five legal experts plus 3 IOLTA specialists helped us co-create our feature set.

After building and refining our POC and MVP, we launched an alpha that quickly gained traction — ultimately resulting in a full build and handover to a brand new M&T team.

Research footprint: 33 in-depth interviews with solo and small-firm lawyers, office managers, and bookkeepers across NY, NJ, and MD; 140+ national survey respondents; 8 outside experts; plus 25+ M&T relationship managers.
03Research footprint — 33 interviews across NY, NJ, MD, plus 140+ survey respondents and outside experts.
03My role
  • Developed research plan to test our functional POC and detailed screens with lawyers; worked with our recruiter to identify the right participants, drafted discussion guides, and co-facilitated interviews
  • Synthesized findings and made recommendations based on user research to shape and evolve the product throughout alpha and MVP stages, working closely with our designers and engineers
  • Created a service blueprint for Beta execution outlining the back-stage actions required for an ideal user flow
  • Trained embedded clients on design thinking and how to run strategic design sprints
Nota Beta service blueprint mapping customer acquisition, concierge account opening, and product use across user flow, touchpoints, on-stage and off-stage actions, and support systems.
04The service blueprint that I created enabled a small team to operate our Beta product, and validate our product at scale.
04The solution

Nota is a digital bank for lawyers that makes compliance easy. Attorneys link their existing bank accounts and get smart alerts as money moves in and out of their IOLTA — flagging the moments where a misstep would normally trigger a bar complaint.

Every transaction can be tagged to a client matter, manually or with suggested tags, so the trust ledger and the bank ledger stay in lock-step. Attorneys can see pending outgoing checks at a glance, and Nota automatically produces the reconciliation reports bar associations require — collapsing what used to be a month-end ritual across three systems into a single, audit-ready view.

Nota Client Matters view — a grid of client matter cards, each showing that client's adjusted balance in the IOLTA account and any outstanding checks.
05The ‘Client Matters’ view surfaces each client's retainer balance — including outstanding checks.
It can do everything I have been able to do in other software, but I've never been able to do it directly within my banking. This alleviates a lot of duplicative work and mental stress.
Keith, Attorney reviewing our POC · Buffalo, NY

Results

Five years post-launch
Deposits $350m+

In deposits across 2,000+ law firms within five years of launch.

Acquisition 100%

Of user-acquisition targets hit — 50 lawyer customers in the first 6 months post-Beta.

Onboarding 5.7x

Faster onboarding — cut from 17 days to 3.

Precedent 1st

Cloud-native application for M&T Bank.

Watch demo video on YouTube  ↗
06The Nota platform — smart alerts, transaction tagging by client matter, and one-click reconciliation. Demo courtesy of The Florida Bar Association.