I feel like it would help my accountant out and cut the book keeping costs down opposed to handing him a stack of receipts & statements. 

Ideally, the CPA does bookkeeping as well.In regard to legal costs, it varies from attorney-to-attorney.

It will minimize a chance that you would lose money on this deal and/or ruin your friendship.Here is an incomplete list of what you will need, and most of that requires an attorney's help:write a strong operational agreement for your LLC, covering numerous what-ifstransfer the ownership to the LLC, either with a deed or with one of the alternative methodsconvert the responsibility for the loan from him to jointarrange that your insurance will accommodate the ownership changeestablish operating procedures, including resolving decision deadlocksset up a solid bookkeeping systemI cannot tell how experienced you guys are with flipping, but a warning is due: over 95% of first-time flips lose money.

The plan is to manage a few properties myself to get my systems in place then hire someone to do showings/book keeping on the software,I know this will be a constant work in progress and I will adjust things as I go but 2 things I want to get strait before I start...Legal - I have reviewed fair housing laws and will have my employee do the same - but incase legal issue/questions or evictions come up should I contact an attorney now?

stessa is free and BP sponsored, i use bench for my bookkeepers

There's plenty of responsibilities that need divvied up- leasing and managing the tenants and maintenance issues that come up, bookkeeping/accounting/paying the bills, etc. 

A bookkeeper might keep track of everything but that's an expense and if you're just starting, you wont need that. 

I use the bookkeeping software Stessa.

If he is the investor should he also be the accountant/book keeper/ account payable? 

Including logging in, navigating, scanning in the mortgage statement, entering the transaction into my bookkeeping software - I can pay a mortgage in about 5 minutes.