M&T Bank officially threw its hat into the legal tech ring last week with the launch of Nota, a piece of fintech software designed to help law firms and solo practitioners execute the finer details of trust account management. The solution allows attorneys to make payments, request funds and track transactions from within their M&T accounts.

From a value proposition standpoint, M&T is betting that a technological assist will be more appealing to lawyers than a manual three-way reconciliation process that balances books against client ledgers and bank statements. Still, designing and marketing a product specifically for lawyers thrusts the bank into a crowded marketplace with competitors who have a long history building products for legal. What those competitors may not have, however, is a bank’s intrinsic knowledge of financial regulations and customers’ bookkeeping pain points.