This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in law firms, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
Time recorded and left in WIP past the point any client will pay it, aging quietly because writing it off requires a conversation nobody wants.
A realization rate that is reported firm-wide and never decomposed, so the two practice groups dragging it down are invisible in the average.
Disbursements incurred on a client's behalf and never recharged — small individually, and continuous.
Panel rate agreements with volume commitments or agreed discounts that nobody tracks against actual billings.
Trust and client account reconciliation exceptions carried month to month, which is a regulatory exposure rather than an accounting untidiness.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation9 requests written for law firms, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery matter in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
4 core requests written for law firms, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Matter list with fee arrangement — Hourly, fixed, contingent or capped, by practice group.
Billed, collected and written down by matter — Recorded time, billed time and collected fee are three different numbers.
Work in progress and unbilled time — Aged by matter and fee earner.
Client and trust account reconciliation — Balances, aging and unclaimed funds. Reconciliation exceptions here are a regulatory matter, not merely an accounting one.
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
A partner retiring or de-equitizing, which forces a real valuation of WIP and receivables rather than a comfortable one
A merger conversation, where the other side's diligence asks the questions nobody internal has asked
A bar audit or a trust account exception that did not clear
A practice management migration, which surfaces every unbilled matter at once
A bank covenant test on the firm's line of credit
Who needs to be in the room
Signs it: Managing partner, or the executive committee
Will resist it: The practice group heads whose realization the review will decompose — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: The finance director, who has been saying this for two years
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.