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Law Ruler – Setup LawPay Online Payments - Tutorial Follow

Daniel Jacobs
  • Updated

💲 💳 The LawPay tutorial will help familiarize you with how to accept credit card and eCheck payments with the LawPay integration inside of Law Ruler.  In today’s business environment, credit card and eCheck (ACH/EFT) payments are standard.  Law Ruler has integrated with LawPay, the market leader in law firm payments.

🔒 PCI-Compliant Security: All credit card and eCheck processing are performed securely in a PCI-compliant environment on LawPay’s servers.  Law Ruler opens a secure gateway to LawPay and does not store any credit card or eCheck banking information to maintain our PCI compliance. This approach will keep the payment information as secure as possible.

Activate LawPay for Online Credit Card and eCheck Payments

Let’s get started with how to connect LawPay to your Law Ruler system. The future is here and accepting payments via credit cards and eChecks (ACH/EFT) is key to maintaining positive cash flow.  Candidly, credit cards and eChecks allow your firm to save time during the invoice and collections process and are more of a requirement than a convenience today.  Law Ruler proudly supports our integration with the market-leading payment vendor, Law Pay. 

Any accounting or administrative access user may access the "LawPay Settings" screen from the inside of any invoice or retainer request.  

As an alternative, an administrative user may also click on “Setup” and “Billing Settings” You must be a user with admin access, or you will not be able to see these menu options. Please ask your firm administrator or IT department if you need these changes made. 

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On the “Billing Settings” screen, in the top-right corner, click the “LawPay Settings” button as shown:

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After clicking this button, you will be in the LawPay Settings screen as shown below:

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Enter your LawPay login and password.  This is required to activate the integration. In LawPay, if you are asked to Authorize or Deny the Law Ruler integration then select "Authorize" to complete the setup.

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New to LawPay? LawPay makes it easy to sign up. If you do not have a LawPay account yet, then click to apply inside of the Law Ruler “LawPay Settings” screen.  It is important that you do this from inside of Law Ruler so LawPay knows how to process your application. After LawPay approves your account, please come back to this screen and use the instructions above to click on the green button to “Activate/Sign in to LawPay” and enter your login and password to sync your LawPay account with Law Ruler.

🎈 Success! At this time, your LawPay account will be synced with Law Ruler and you will be able to start sending payment requests for credit card and eCheck transactions to your clients.  Enjoy! 💳

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If successful, your screen should have the green “Connected” indicator after
“Sign in using your LawPay account” as shown below:
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Sync Your LawPay Deposit Accounts to Law Ruler Bank Accounts

In order to use the LawPay integration, you must have a minimum of two (2) bank accounts set up in your Law Ruler system and pair them with LawPay accounts. These will be virtual bank accounts and not actually touch your real bank accounts.  If you have not added any bank accounts to your Law Ruler system, then press the blue "+ Add Account" button to add them.  LawPay requires you to have an operating and trust account.

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  • You must have at least one (1) trust account set up in Law Ruler that is set as the Primary Account.  It is recommended to use your trust account for retainer requests.
  • You must have at least one (1) operating account set up in Law Ruler is set as the Primary Account.  It is recommended to use your operating account for invoices. Operating accounts may not be used for retainer requests. 
  • LawPay only allows you to pair each LawPay deposit account one-time (1x) and not to multiple Law Ruler bank accounts, so you may only pair each LawPay account one-time.  If you see an on-screen warning that says "Validation Error" then you must change the duplicate pairing to an unpaired value of "--- Not Connected to LawPay ---" for any duplicates.  
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  • Any additional accounts may be added at your discretion but do not need to be added or paired with LawPay to complete the setup process.
⚠️ If you are mapping to a Law Ruler account type of Operating, you will only see LawPay Deposit accounts that are Operating accounts. This is the same for Trust accounts, where Law Ruler account types of Trust will only show LawPay Deposit accounts that are trust accounts. 

After you have selected the accounts to pair and set the primary accounts, press the blue "Save" button at the bottom of the screen to complete your LawPay setup.

Configure LawPay Payment Methods and Other Settings

Also, you have a few other options that are optional for LawPay set up.  First, choose the payment methods that you want to accept.  You may choose from “Allow Payments via Credit Card” or “Allow Payments via eCheck (ACH/EFT)” Most firms will want to accept both since eChecks usually have a lower merchant transaction fee than credit cards.

Finally, you will decide if you want to “Allow clients to edit the payment amount on LawPay invoices” This is set to “Off” by default which will only allow clients to pay the amount in your invoice and not edit the amount.  If you would like to turn this “On” then press the “On/Off” selector control and then press the blue "Save" button at the bottom of the screen.  You may come back and change these settings as needed.

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Changing the LawPay Deposit Account on the Fly

Some firms may have the need to change their LawPay deposit account on specific invoices or retainer requests for various reasons if they have several trust or operating accounts.  Law Ruler allows you to change the LawPay deposit account from inside of any invoice or retainer before it is sent out.  Please be aware that after the invoice or retainer request is sent out, the only way to change the LawPay account is to resend the invoice or retainer request, or cancel it and create a new one.

From the inside of an invoice, change the dropdown if you want to use a different LawPay deposit account.  Only LawPay accounts that are currently set up and available in your LawPay account will be displayed.

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Handling Errors or Issues with the LR > LawPay Sync

"Unknown error" - If your firm attempts to process a payment and it fails, then you must turn off the Required Payment Fields of Address 1, City, State, Postal Code, or Country in LawPay settings.  If you have manual confirmation for any address verification turned on in LawPay, then the LawPay sync will fail and log the following message in the API, "Street number cannot be blank" This should not be enabled since the Law Ruler system is already going to send the customer address to LawPay for you.

You can modify this setting in LawPay by going to Settings->My Business tab, Deposit Accounts to the right, Edit, then the Manual Entry Policies section.

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How to Disconnect Your LawPay Account from Law Ruler

If you need to disconnect your LawPay account from Law Ruler, then press the red “Disconnect” button under the “Deactivate Payments” header which will appear only after your account is successfully connected to LawPay.

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The Client’s View: The Invoice and Pay Now Button

When you send an invoice to each client via email or text message (depending on your configuration), they will receive a clickable link to the invoice.

If your firm has the LawPay integration activated, then your client will be able to use the blue “Pay Now” button at the top-right corner of the invoice to pay you with a credit card or eCheck (ACH/EFT) depending on which LawPay payment methods you allow. Otherwise, they will need to make payment arrangements with your team or mail your payment.

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Support/Assistance

If you need further assistance with your Law Ruler system, then please contact Law Ruler Support.

💲 LawPay is a third-party application and is a cloud-based online payments provider.  Law Ruler is a legal case management software CRM that integrates with LawPay to provide law firm invoicing and billing functions by combining Law Ruler with LawPay via the integration. 

Please note that LawPay is a third-party vendor and is responsible for supporting and maintaining the LawPay service.  Law Ruler Software, LLC provides a connection to LawPay to allow our clients to use their LawPay accounts with Law Ruler legal billing software. Law Ruler is not a merchant bank or payment provider.

Aside from Law Ruler, all other trademarks, trade names, screenshots, or company names referenced herein are used for identification purposes only and are the property of their respective owners.

🤗 Thank you very much for choosing Law Ruler!

 

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