Accountants

As an accountant regularly dealing with the thorny issue of valuation of solicitors’ practices, you may be interested in the services that we can offer in this most distinct market place.

A particularly specialised branch of our work is the evaluation of real work in progress figures to assist not only potential lenders, but also solicitors themselves who need to make best use of their assets, despite the apparent size of their balance sheet. Unfortunately, it is all too often the case that the figure on the balance sheet does not accurately reflect the real work in progress figures for a firm. This is, however, a crucial aspect of valuing a firm for merger or acquisition, or advising a firm in respect of practice performance, fee recovery rates, and effective use of monies tied up in work in progress. In these uncertain days for practice funding, we can help pave the way to realising this intangible asset.

Because we are legally qualified, and experienced file reviewers, we are in a unique position to be able to tell whether a matter is likely to achieve all, part, or none of their claimed work in progress. We can provide detailed evidence as to:

• Recoverable fees in litigious/contentious cases
• Dates by which such fees will be recovered
• Likely non-contentious fees
• Likely “irrecoverable” work in progress
• Active client analysis

We have corrected WIP figures by up to 52.5%, which shows just how inaccurate stated WIP can be – your clients will value such expertise highly and it could significantly alter terms of mergers, acquisitions, or partnership dissolution. It is a cost that solicitors often would be prepared to cover as a disbursements, as the cost to them of using us would be a fraction of the cost of using their own senior personnel.