Legal cashier job description (with duties and skills)

Updated 15 February 2023

Law firms and solicitors' offices typically employ financial professionals in addition to legal professionals. Industry regulations require such businesses to have specialised legal cashiers to handle their financial bookkeeping and accounting activities. This bespoke career path could be an attractive option for you if you have good maths skills or an interest in legal or financial professions. In this article, we get a better understanding of a legal cashier job description by exploring some day-to-day duties, essential skills, training requirements and the demand for legal cashiers.

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Legal cashier job description

Having a strong understanding of what employers might include in a legal cashier job description can be quite helpful if you're interested in pursuing a career. For example, knowing what attributes organisations value in prospective candidates can help you plan how to best showcase your strengths to recruiters or what areas of your skill set you might wish to develop further. Although the exact job description of a legal cashier varies according to the size of a firm or its speciality, you can broadly define legal cashiers as specialised financial professionals working in the legal sector.

These bookkeepers manage the financial accounts of law firms and solicitors' offices. Their presence as part of a firm's infrastructure is a regulatory requirement for such businesses. Different responsibilities may result in employers looking for candidates with different skills and experiences. Despite these differences, there are often certain commonalities in the duties across the profession. Understanding more about these can help you effectively plan your professional development and give you a foundation for a successful and fulfilling career.

Typical day-to-day activities of a legal cashier

It's necessary for legal cashiers to possess industry qualifications that indicate they can manage the financial accounts for organisations in the legal sector in accordance with all relevant industry guidelines. The specific guidelines they follow and the body that observes compliance can vary depending on the specialism or location of the law firm. There are general regulations that all cashiers adhere to in their work, regardless of the specific activities of their law firm, such as legislation regarding value-added tax (VAT) and anti-money laundering.

Here are some general duties that are likely to appear in a job description for a legal cashier vacancy:

maintaining office and client ledgers
ensuring the organisation's bank accounts and books match up by performing bank reconciliations
processing transactions, including money received by the organisation and payments out, by various financial mechanisms, including bank transfer and cheque
producing daily, weekly and monthly reports on the financial status of the organisation
invoicing clients for services rendered and chasing overdue payments owed
checking bookkeeping for errors
reporting any suspected account breaches or unauthorised activities via the appropriate channels
submitting quarterly and year-end VAT returns for the organisation through the government's online portal
monitoring your work and the operations of the finance team to ensure compliance with relevant regulations
liaising with relevant external parties, including clients, auditors, suppliers, banking providers, regulatory bodies and compliance officers
possibly handling other non-finance administrative duties in smaller organisations, including administrative tasks related to human resources and marketing, for instance

Legal cashier skills

Here are a few details of some of the technical and non-technical skills that a successful legal cashier tends to have:

Hard skills

There are specific technical skills that help you successfully execute your duties as a legal cashier. You're likely to develop these skills as part of your work, although you may wish to reinforce this training by also pursuing formal qualifications. Since a basic understanding of financial transactions is advantageous, employers often look to recruit people with some prior experience as a cashier in any setting. Other specific, fundamental technical skills legal cashiers require to successfully execute their duties include:

proficiency with legal accounting software
knowledge of annual audit and inspection processes
understanding of industry accounting rules and regulations
understanding of basic banking processes
proficiency with double-entry bookkeeping
knowledge of maintaining client and office accounts
ability to complete VAT returns

Soft skills

Soft skills can help you be a more adaptable and effective professional. Many employers greatly value soft skills when recruiting, frequently preferring candidates who can demonstrate a well-developed soft skill set. Soft skills that can be of benefit to a legal cashier include:

multi-tasking
attention to detail
organisation
time management
teamworking
a desire for continual learning and development
written and verbal communication
honesty and integrity
stress management

Legal cashier training

One potentially attractive aspect of a legal cashier career is that the position doesn't require formal qualifications. Nonetheless, a robust understanding of financial principles or legal practices is typically advantageous. Although university study can be expensive and time-consuming, university study in finance or law, for example, can make you more effective at your duties and may accelerate your career development. Having at least a bachelor's degree may make your application more competitive compared to others.

Entering the legal cashier profession via an entry-level role can be a cost-effective way to gain qualifications. Organisations recognise the value of having qualified cashiers. They also know the recruitment process often requires a great investment of time and resources for them. Organisations, therefore, often offer training opportunities to the legal cashiers they recruit. Through professional development training alongside your work, you can ensure you maintain up-to-date knowledge of industry regulations and best practices. You may even be able to obtain formal, industry-recognised qualifications or membership to professional bodies for legal financial practitioners.

Example of a legal cashier job description for a job vacancy

When searching for a legal cashier opportunity, a vacancy advertisement typically includes a job description. This is essentially a description of what the employer is looking for from their ideal candidate. It summarises the experience, skills and training the organisation expects from those applying for the position. An extract from a job description for a legal cashier role might look like this:

Dorman and Condemine, a global law firm specialising in intellectual property law, is looking for an enthusiastic legal cashier to join the dynamic finance team in our Liverpool offices.

About the role

An exciting opportunity has opened up for the right candidate to assist the accounting manager in our prestigious Liverpool branch. Your job is to support the accounting manager with all aspects of the daily cashier duties for our client and office accounts. You're also to ensure full compliance with industry regulations. Other key responsibilities include:

processing client transactions, including chasing overdue payments
processing and properly recording all payments made to the firm
running daily reports on the status of client payments and producing monthly reports on the firm's accounts
assisting with the completion of quarterly and year-end VAT returns

About you

The ideal candidate has a genuine enthusiasm for and interest in the legal sector and accounting work. We provide full training for the position, so although we prefer you have previous experience as a legal cashier, this experience isn't a requirement. We also prefer you have a basic knowledge of intellectual property law. You're a good fit for our team if you have:

well-developed interpersonal skills and confidence in interacting with people at all levels of the organisation
excellent written and verbal communication skills
the ability to work well in a team environment
strong attention to detail

Find legal cashier jobs

Is the role in demand?

Legal cashiers appear to be a fairly in-demand role, making them an attractive possible career prospect. They're essential to the operations of legal firms, necessitated by industry regulations. Any legal business that wishes to operate in full compliance requires a legal cashier. These professionals play an important role in the smooth financial and administrative running of a legal organisation. There also appears to be a limited candidate pool for this niche position.

Demand for legal cashiers from organisations seems to far outweigh the available supply of available professionals. This may be because of the work organisations do to retain their legal cashiers, offering training opportunities and other incentives to keep them working there. If you're a talented and capable individual wishing to enter the profession, you're likely to find ample opportunities to do so. Equally, once working as a legal cashier, there are likely to be plenty of new opportunities for you to pursue if you desire a change in your work.