News Articles

• Blog
• Client Testimonials
• Candidate Testimonials
• Balance Secret Series

Balance Secret Series

Case File 5 - Senior Legal Cashier - Silver Circle law firm
22-Mar-18
Tell us a little about what your current position involves on a day to day basis: Working for a silver circle law firm, the majority of my average working day is dealing with cash transactions on the office accounts side across both London and International offices and helping to oversee the work of others in the team. This includes monitoring daily receipts, account balances, funding requirements using FX where necessary and reconciliation of multiple accounts.  Also ensuring any third party disbursements and counsel fees are processed accurately and in a timely manner.   The role is extremely busy which can involve dealing with urgent requirements from fee earners so you have to be able to prioritise and have accurate attention to detail at all times. It can get pretty hectic at times I have to say, especially at month, quarter and year end!  Every role has its ups and downs. What are the good, the bad and ugly parts of your current position? The Good A good part of my role is being given the freedom by my manager to change and develop processes to ensure everything runs in a streamlined and efficient manner.  I also enjoy working in a friendly and supportive team environment – there’s a really good team spirit and frequent social events.      The Bad Sometimes when you want to change and improve things, it can be difficult to change people’s mindset, especially when you have members of staff who’ve been in place for a very long time and are part of the furniture!  You have to be able to deal with push back (typical in law firms) on ideas and some people (not all!) can be averse to change.  This can be a challenge sometimes and something you have to overcome.   The Ugly The next step up from a Legal Cashier role would be Legal Cashier Supervisor/Manager however there aren’t many of these positions that become available and any that do, unless gained through internal promotion, will usually require previous supervisory experience. Getting that experience can be a waiting game, as you can often find that people in these senior positions have been in place for 10 or even 20+ years and are very unlikely to move on.  What advice would you give to someone eager to develop their career within Legal Cashiering? With many law firms at the moment looking to implement new practice management systems, it can provide the opportunity to get involved in other projects and testing, which will help to broaden your experience.  Go on as many training courses as you can ensuring you are up to date with SAR rule changes, VAT regulations and other regulatory/compliance rules. Consider studying for the ILFM Diploma also, which can be a good differentiator. Also, be wary about getting comfortable and staying in the same role for many years, as there’s a danger of getting stuck.  What is your number one tip on how to be successful in the role of Legal ...

Case File 4 - Finance Systems – BI & Reporting Manager, Global Law Firm
16-Nov-17
Tell us a little about what your current position involves on a day to day basis: The majority of an average working day is dealing with requests and queries relating to our reporting information and environments. These normally come directly from Finance but we work with a variety of departments across the firm. Marketing / Pricing / Business Development / Public Relations / Compliance and direct to senior management. This varies from simple requests from frequent users and results in pointing them in the direction of a pre-existing report, checking that all of our integrated systems have up to date information and our overnight feeds and processes haven’t failed, all the way up to someone asking for a bespoke report with calculated fields.    The more interesting part of the role is that we are also often asked to comment on new processes and how reporting and data can assist in making it more efficient. Finding data or providing information that others thought were inaccessible is strangely satisfying as it impresses people.  Every role has its ups and downs. What are the good, the bad and ugly parts of your current position? The Good The variety of requests and learning about the decision making which is based on those requests. The finance system is often the hub of data as it flows around the organisations. Knowledge of this means we have the power to provide useful information to almost everyone in the organisation from the catering department up to the chief executive and managing partners.  Knowing the secrets first is always fun, you may not know it every time but you soon learn when you are asked for a data from certain areas of the system big news might be on its way. For example a jurisdiction report on law firms you have worked closely with means some high level joint venture or merger talks are going on well above your pay grade but they are talking about what you just gave them.  The Bad Users are users! They are often not Finance or Technical people, they might not understand what you are talking about when you ask for a clearer definition of their report. Even simple questions like “which currency or which period range would you like?” are met with blank looks. Often they have been asked by someone else anyway. You need to be patient and try to educate these users in the hope they come back next time with a clearer specification.  Out of the box standard reporting - users believe this is a thing, management believe this is a thing... only we know there is no one report that fits all. We have developed “standard” reporting suites for users that don’t meet their needs 3 months later.  The Ugly Third party requests, often requests will go from partners to secretaries to business development to various finance teams. Ultimately they come back to our reporting team, sometimes manipulated and misinterpreted like a work version of Chinese whispers. They can often get the credit for your ...

Case File 3 - Senior Finance Manager (Operations), Global Law Firm
23-Oct-17
Tell us a little about what your current position involves on a day to day basis: Having worked through a number of roles over many years you tend to take elements of old jobs through to new ones, and so day to day my role is very wide ranging, with much of my time business facing, tackling issues or looking to improve on the impact of my teams work within the firm. Increasingly international office related work is taking up much of the day as this continues to be a growth area, but centrally managed from a Finance perspective. Officially my day involves overall responsibility for client money, AP, Billing, treasury and everything audit, policy and compliance orientated relating to these areas. Every role has its ups and downs. What are the good, the bad and ugly parts of your current position? The Good I really enjoy implementing new processes or introducing automated processes and workflows. It is rewarding to look back at how things used to be and realise that the end result is now achieved sooner, more accurately and in a more cost efficient manner. I manage a large team and really enjoy the interaction with the group and it is rewarding to see some of those people really develop their own careers. The Bad Having to accept that many people do not have a committed or pro-active approach to work. I always feel you can divide staff within processing linked roles in three ways, firstly those who will be great but ultimately see these jobs as stepping stones to bigger and better things, those who love what they do, want to stay in that type of role but really embrace change and challenges, and those who just want a pile of work at 9am and a clear desk at 5pm. The latter being a real challenge to pushing a team forward and gaining greater credibility within a firm. The Ugly Trying to manage the above, but still motivate those who want to go the extra mile. What advice would you give to someone eager to develop their career within Financial Operations? Look for opportunities to get involved in more senior work, ask lots of questions and be prepared to put in the time to develop skills. Finance Operations can be quite broad and there is no right approach to how work should always be done. To manage such a broad skillset, you must be flexible and also willing to both offer and accept advice and criticism from both ends of the hierarchy. What is your number one tip on how to be successful in the role of Senior Finance Manager - Operations Make sure you have a good, proactive and highly skilled team, delegate to them and encourage them to take on more, but be understanding of the fact that when running a large team there are lots of different characters and personalities, and that it is your job to adapt to them and motivate them – don’t expect them all to change! You can’t do everything within the group yourself, and if you can have subject experts within the team you can step back which in itself allows you to exercise greater control over the whole ...

Case File 2 - Commercial Finance Manager, Global Law Firm
11-Sep-17
Tell us a little about what your current position involves on a day to day basis: Lots! It really can be varied which is what makes it interesting. This can range from business review meetings, analysing current performance vs. budget, pricing, profitability analysis, review of potential lateral hires, project work, and trend analysis. There is always something going on! Every role has its ups and downs. What are the good, the bad and ugly parts of your current position?  The Good:  There is huge opportunity to drive change and have a real impact. Law is changing at an ever-increasing pace and the commercial role is seen as pivotal to this, helping to shape strategy and ensure the business is aligned to it. You can see the value of your contribution which is very rewarding.  The Bad: Law firms are never the quickest to react to change and therefore there can be a level of frustration in driving changes through. It is one thing having agreement that change need to take place, but another to get them over the line. The Ugly: Being commercial means you are ultimately the face of finance – the ones on the front line. Therefore, it also requires you to handle the difficult conversations and questions or complaints which are not always specific to anything you have done, but are expected to understand and resolve. What advice would you give to someone eager to develop their career within a commercial finance team?  Work hard to develop a rounded skill set. It is important to have the technical skills but equally important that you have the people skills to go with it. A crucial part of the role is being able to translate financial data into terms that non-finance people can understand and then be able to persuade them to follow the strategy. You need to be able to hold firm and know how far you can push, which is a difficult balancing act. What is your number one tip on how to be successful in the role of Commercial Finance Manager? Remember that there are two sides to every coin – you have to be able to see it from a client or Partner perspective as well as simply looking at the numbers and deciding yes or no. There is a much bigger picture to think about. If I am allowed a second (!), I would also say it is important to develop a thick skin! If you were hiring for your team, what stands out to you when reviewing applications? Aside from the usual skills required, I look for personality. I want someone who can engage Partners and adapt their style to suit the situation in order to achieve the right outcome. Commercial finance means being people-facing so ultimately you need to be ready to put your best foot forward whatever the situation and find a way to reach the best outcome for all parties. If you would to take part in our Secret Series, please get in touch! ...

Case File 1 - Senior Pricing Analyst, Global Law Firm
03-Aug-17
Getting under the skin of the Legal Finance Profession The Balance Secret Series provides an insider view on the realities of working within the different specialist roles that occupy a law firm finance department. These are real accounts from specially selected professionals who have developed highly successful careers within their chosen fields. Under the cover of anonymity, the Secret Series allows you to find out the good, the bad and the ugly.... Case File 1 - Senior Pricing Analyst, Global Law Firm Tell us a little about what your current position involves on a day to day basis: Producing Profitability financial reports, pricing structures, and fee proposal structures included AFA’s for global and singular location Client RFPs, but also one-off matter pitches to enable us to (hopefully) win pitches and in the process make monetary returns.  Every pitch/quote is as varied as our clients backgrounds are.  My role is based in a central team in the London office and involves working with all our practice groups globally.  We also offer ongoing and post matter support, reviewing the successful pitches and the relevant assumptions to ensure we keep on track. We also look at unsuccessful pitches if feedback is provided to analyse where we may have gone wrong and take note to ensure we get it right in the future. This is the beginnings of the LPM skillset. I have also been involved in attending meetings with clients to discuss fee proposals, best practice and to understand their bespoke needs. Most interesting has been being utilised for financial support and analysis on client legal work and charging my time to the client as a ‘Fee earner’. Every role has its ups and downs. What are the good, the bad and ugly parts of your current position? The Good: The varied workload (analysis, client meetings and client fee based work), interacting daily with our Partners, Fee earners and Business support colleagues. The feeling of adding value for the work you provide and knowing that it makes a real difference and is appreciated within the business. The Bad: The late timed requests to turnaround some analysis within hours when often the original documentation has been in the Partners inbox for over week. This can mean working long in to the night and even weekends to ensure pitch deadlines are met.  The Ugly: My face! – The embarrassment of when you watch the play back of presentations/coaching you deliver to partners and fee earner on pricing strategies, financial health and key client specifics.  Knowing the partners – You become a key representative of the finance department which means attempting to control your drinking at the Summer party… What advice would you give to someone eager to develop their career within Pricing? Understanding the key profit drivers. Many firms have standard applications or excel workbooks that give an answer, but interpreting these answers is the key. What is your number one tip on how to be ...