Forecasting Contingent Fees, with Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright
How do you forecast revenue when your biggest cases might settle months later than expected? Ben Gideon and Jeff Wright explain how Gideon Asen has consistently landed within 5% to 10% of its annual revenue projections despite the uncertainty of contingent fees. Their approach combines a rainy day fund and unused line of credit with a formula that sets aside settlement proceeds for bonuses, taxes, and reserves. Ben reveals how quarterly case reviews shape projections and why the firm caps each case's budgeted value at $10 million. Drawing on his banking background, Jeff explains why monitoring expenses matters as much as growing revenue. Learn how a weekly finance meeting under 30 minutes can help protect your firm against financial uncertainty.
Learn More and Connect
☑️ Ben Gideon | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram
☑️ Jeff Wright | LinkedIn
☑️ Gideon Asen on LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram | X
☑️ Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
Produced and Powered by LawPods, a podcast marketing agency for law firms
Sponsored by Supio and 1% for the Planet
Great lawyers don't always know how to build great law firms.
Speaker:Let's change that.
Speaker:Join Ben Gideon as he shares hard-won lessons from building his own financially
Speaker:successful law firm and practical insights from top law firm entrepreneurs,
Speaker:business consultants, and more.
Speaker:This is a podcast for lawyers by lawyers.
Speaker:Welcome to Elawvate: Build and Grow Your Law Firm.
Speaker:Produced and powered by LawPods.
Speaker:Hello everyone, and welcome to the Elawvate,
Speaker:Build and Grow Your Law Firm podcast. As we hear Ben's dog in the back,
Speaker:I am Jeff Wright, chief operating officer at Gideon Asen. As always,
Speaker:joined by Ben Gideon, partner owner. Oh, it's been a morning, Ben, how are you?
Speaker:I'm doing fine. That's my dog Rafi in the background. The turf guy's here,
Speaker:so she's making her presence known, but it's okay.
Speaker:Everyone's used to dogs on Zoom calls and meetings,
Speaker:so I'm sure you're fine with it. So we were talking about our big day today.
Speaker:Let's just get to it. Today is Fletch Day at Gideon Asen.
Speaker:Fletch Day is the most important holiday of the year.
Speaker:It's the day that we commemorate bad '80s comedies.
Speaker:I like to think of them as good '80s comedies.
Speaker:We have rented out a movie theater and we will be watching the movie Fletch
Speaker:tonight. It's optional, but required for all staff at Gideon Asen.
Speaker:Family, friends have been invited and we have a good crew, 40, 50 people coming,
Speaker:pizza, movie.
Speaker:Recommended attire is either a tuxedo shirt or bison wear.
Speaker:That's a whole nother podcast. If you're watching this on YouTube,
Speaker:Jeff is sporting some of our latest bison wear,
Speaker:very handsome sweatshirt with a bison and a judge. So there's a whole nother
Speaker:story behind that.
Speaker:So the good thing about owning your own law firm is that most people will never
Speaker:be president of their own country or king of their own nation.
Speaker:But when you're president of your own law firm,
Speaker:you can create a set of rules set around very silly values
Speaker:that you enjoy and then force other people to live by those rules.
Speaker:So that's what we're doing here.
Speaker:As chief operating officer and also head of human resources,
Speaker:unfortunately that is our environment,
Speaker:but it works well and we're going to have a fun night tonight.
Speaker:Yeah, we try to have fun. There's worse things than that.
Speaker:I know we have kind of a truncated timeframe this morning.
Speaker:I want to make sure we get to everything.
Speaker:But.
Speaker:First of all, I'd like to call out our sponsors who we're very thankful for.
Speaker:First of all, 1% for the Planet.
Speaker:As those of you who have been listening to this podcast,
Speaker:1% for the Planet is where businesses such as ourselves
Speaker:pledge 1% of your revenue and the money goes to 1% for the
Speaker:Planet and they allocate it appropriately to environmental
Speaker:nonprofits that they have pre-vetted for you.
Speaker:So obviously if environmental nonprofits is something your firm
Speaker:has a passion for, we strongly recommend looking into 1% for the Planet.
Speaker:If you do sign up,
Speaker:let us know and we'd be happy to give you a shoutout on the podcast.
Speaker:We're also brought to you by Supio,
Speaker:which is an AI platform designed by and for plaintiff trial
Speaker:lawyers.
Speaker:It's used widely by members of a group we're part of called the Injury Board.
Speaker:We actually had some of their leadership team on our podcast,
Speaker:but many members of that group were part of the founding group of lawyers who
Speaker:helped to design that platform and have helped to hone it to something that is
Speaker:specifically tailored to the needs of plaintiff's trial lawyers.
Speaker:It gets rave reviews by everybody who uses it and we highly recommend you
Speaker:check them out.
Speaker:Just to chime in, Ben, sorry to cut you off,
Speaker:but I was out at the Injury Board Summit a couple weeks ago and it was sponsored
Speaker:by Supio as one of their main sponsors.
Speaker:They had three representatives there and they were just extremely nice,
Speaker:knowledgeable people. It was great meeting them.
Speaker:Definitely someone to check out.
Speaker:Yeah. In fact, their CEO has been on this very podcast.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:All right, let's get to it.
Speaker:Today we're here on Fletch Day to talk about a less maybe
Speaker:exciting topic, but one that's extremely important to any business,
Speaker:particularly a law firm business. And that is the topic of financial planning,
Speaker:budgets, and financial controls. And I mean, Jeff,
Speaker:you have a long history of managing banks.
Speaker:I'm certain that in the banking world,
Speaker:financial planning budgets and financial controls are paramount, right?
Speaker:Yeah, they are beyond paramount.
Speaker:And especially the regulatory agencies that we're under and the ratios that
Speaker:banks have to keep in terms of Tier 1 capital and things like that.
Speaker:I realize coming here from the banking world, and I'm not a CFO at all,
Speaker:we had a CFO, we had a controller,
Speaker:we had a very large experienced finance department at every bank I worked in.
Speaker:But one thing I realized coming here is it was so much easier to project income
Speaker:and everything else at the bank.
Speaker:You have $200 million worth of loans on your books at an average rate of 6%,
Speaker:and you're assuming a certain percentage of those people are going to make their
Speaker:payments on time.
Speaker:You know what your interest income is and you know what your debit card fee
Speaker:income is and you know what your overdrafts are projected to be. And it was much
Speaker:easier to project monthly income and annual income and then set
Speaker:very definitive goals on what you need to replace for loans that were paid
Speaker:off and what you need to put on the books for growth.
Speaker:Coming here to a contingent fee world that obviously I had no
Speaker:part of and trying to make somewhat accurate projections about
Speaker:contingent fee income is just a completely different animal.
Speaker:Yeah, it's one of the most challenging aspects of doing a plaintiff's based
Speaker:practice like we do.
Speaker:And probably for those listeners that have an hourly rate practice,
Speaker:it's a little bit more in line with what you expected at the bank because you
Speaker:have a certain amount of accounts receivable in terms of fees. On average,
Speaker:your clients pay 85% of your clients are going to pay within X number
Speaker:of days.
Speaker:You can count on that and add that up and figure out what your cash flow looks
Speaker:like. It's a little bit more challenging in a plaintiff's side contingent fee
Speaker:practice. I will talk about that in a minute,
Speaker:kind of how we've attempted to solve that problem. But just to back up,
Speaker:whether you have a hourly rate or contingent fee practice,
Speaker:I think the overall goal of the financial planning side of the
Speaker:business, it's fairly obvious,
Speaker:but if your business isn't around,
Speaker:it isn't going to generate any profits or revenues or succeed. So
Speaker:number one is survival.
Speaker:And the goal is to be able to survive not just in good
Speaker:times,
Speaker:but in bad times when not everything goes according to your business plan
Speaker:or your model.
Speaker:So having to build in some cushion for weathering storms that
Speaker:might cause your competition to go out of business because whatever the
Speaker:issue is,
Speaker:maybe there's a downturn in the business cycle of whatever type of case you're
Speaker:working on. If you're on a contingent fee practice like we are,
Speaker:and you're a small practice and only have a few cases,
Speaker:you may have to wait a long time for the case to
Speaker:monetize.
Speaker:A case may go south just because you had a witness perform poorly
Speaker:or a document emerge that sinks your case.
Speaker:You just have to be prepared for all of those potential contingencies.
Speaker:And so how do you do that? And the way we've attempted to
Speaker:solve that issue of financial resiliency is in a few different ways.
Speaker:One is to have a line of credit,
Speaker:and we've done that in different ways over the years,
Speaker:but to have access to capital for emergencies if needed.
Speaker:So there was a time in which we had a litigation funding type of lender
Speaker:early on that lent us money against our inventory of cases.
Speaker:It was good to have it because we could use it in emergencies if needed to
Speaker:bridge a gap. It came at a very high cost because the interest rates were high.
Speaker:And depending on what state you're in,
Speaker:it may be appropriate or allowed to pass on the interest to
Speaker:clients, but we never felt comfortable doing that.
Speaker:We felt like we earn a healthy fee for our work
Speaker:just straight up and we didn't feel like adding onto that with extra fees and
Speaker:costs associated with interest would be something we felt comfortable doing with
Speaker:our clients. Eventually we moved away from that model and just went to a
Speaker:local bank that we have our overall banking relationship with,
Speaker:and we just have a straightforward commercial loan and a
Speaker:much more reasonable interest rate. And so we have that line of credit.
Speaker:Right now it's at zero and we mostly carry it at zero,
Speaker:but it gives us a substantial cushion if we need it to weather a storm.
Speaker:And then the other thing we do is we've started building out a rainy day
Speaker:fund where we just put money aside in reserve for times
Speaker:that we need that money.
Speaker:The plaintiff's side firm that comes at a heavy cost because that's all really
Speaker:after-tax dollars.
Speaker:And so you're paying taxes on it and not getting the benefit of it.
Speaker:You're not immediately reinvesting it or taking it as profits to the
Speaker:owners. So again, you're paying a heavy price for it,
Speaker:but it feels pretty nice to have a substantial nest egg that's earning
Speaker:interest in an account and there if you need it. Those are two things we've done
Speaker:to create financial unbreakability and resiliency. Jeff,
Speaker:do you want to talk about that at all?
Speaker:Yeah, I was just going to say to add to that, one thing we started, you know,
Speaker:this fiscal year in 2026 was every time we get a settlement,
Speaker:X number of dollars comes in. And with our internal finance person, Christine,
Speaker:who you've heard us mention before is fantastic,
Speaker:we've actually come up with a formula and we know how much of that settlement we
Speaker:need to set aside for end-of-year bonuses. So that goes into one bucket.
Speaker:We know how much of that settlement we want to set aside for quarterly estimated
Speaker:taxes, that goes into that bucket. And then to Ben's point,
Speaker:we have a certain percentage that we save from every settlement that
Speaker:automatically goes into our rainy day fund.
Speaker:So once all of that is extracted from it,
Speaker:we are left with X number of dollars in our operating account for everyday
Speaker:expenses.
Speaker:And we have done that with every single settlement that we have had this year
Speaker:and it's working fantastic. And I think the,
Speaker:I don't want to use the word "anxiety," but the unknown of we have a quarterly
Speaker:tax bill coming, are we going to take out of the operating account?
Speaker:Where are we going to do that? We have buckets for everything. Our bonus is,
Speaker:is going right to our attorneys out of that bucket.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:it's a great system because it doesn't require us to make those decisions each
Speaker:time Christine is directed to take certain percentages,
Speaker:like you just said. And with our rainy day fund,
Speaker:I think there was a time we were taking 10% of every settlement and putting it
Speaker:into the rainy day fund.
Speaker:That number built up quickly and we recognized that it was actually,
Speaker:we were putting too much money aside, particularly because again,
Speaker:it's after-tax dollars.
Speaker:And so we reduced the percentage that we put into that rainy day fund after we
Speaker:had kind of built it to a healthy level.
Speaker:The other thing you obviously have to keep in mind when you're thinking about
Speaker:financial resiliency is the question of overhead.
Speaker:That's a topic that probably deserves an entire episode and we should devote an
Speaker:episode to that because the question of overhead,
Speaker:I find it's very fraught because one person's overhead is another
Speaker:person's capacity that's needed for future growth.
Speaker:And where do you balance that?
Speaker:I have to say one of the areas in which we probably are less focused
Speaker:is on micromanaging overhead.
Speaker:I would say we don't have high levels of precision in terms of
Speaker:the dollars and cents of every additional dollar we spend in overhead.
Speaker:We tend to spend money fairly casually and aspirationally
Speaker:towards our growth model. It's more kind of an extension, I think, of our,
Speaker:at least mine and Taylor,
Speaker:the owner's more casual approach to financial spending.
Speaker:Neither of us are particularly frugal people, I would say,
Speaker:and we tend to be spenders.
Speaker:Perhaps that's a flaw that we have in our model.
Speaker:Perhaps it's allowed us to take risks and grow and do
Speaker:creative things that have been beneficial, but that sort of remains to be seen.
Speaker:I mean, we mentioned at the beginning of the show,
Speaker:we're doing Fletch Day. We rented out a movie theater tonight.
Speaker:We've invited a lot of people. We're going to host it with Pete.
Speaker:That's something certainly not necessary as a core element of our business,
Speaker:but we don't really think twice about spending a few dollars to have a fun
Speaker:event, to help promote the firm, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:I'm at least self-aware enough to know that probably maintaining a
Speaker:cap on overhead is not our forte.
Speaker:Yeah, you bring up a good point, Ben. And again, coming from the banking world,
Speaker:most small businesses do not manage both sides of the balance sheet well.
Speaker:They focus on income, they focus on growth, they focus on revenue,
Speaker:but they're not looking at their expenses.
Speaker:They're not looking at their overhead, their salaries,
Speaker:their benefits and the ancillary things like Fletch Night and stuff like that.
Speaker:And they do a good job focusing on driving revenue, driving income,
Speaker:but if you're increasing that by a certain percentage but your expenses are
Speaker:exceeding that, it's a fruitless endeavor.
Speaker:So you really need to focus on both sides of your balance sheet,
Speaker:which is not done well or consistently. I agree with you.
Speaker:I think if we're very good on our growth and revenue side and projections,
Speaker:but we need to get better on our expense side.
Speaker:Well, you're not going to cancel Fletch Night, are you?
Speaker:No, I'm getting there early. I got pizza being delivered.
Speaker:Need help on a complex personal injury or medical malpractice case?
Speaker:Gideon Asen accepts case referrals and regularly co-counsels with lawyers
Speaker:nationwide on high value claims.
Speaker:The firm has recovered millions of dollars in cases that competitors turned away
Speaker:because they dig deeper. Ready to learn more?
Speaker:Email bgideon@gideonasenlaw.com to start the conversation.
Speaker:Gideon Asen shares fees as permitted by the laws of each state.
Speaker:Don't let complex cases overwhelm your practice.
Speaker:Elevate justice together with Gideon Asen.
Speaker:All right,
Speaker:so that's a good segue to the next point,
Speaker:which is who's going to be in charge of all this? In our firm, we've been,
Speaker:contrary to what I just said about our spendthrift habits,
Speaker:we do have somebody who's very good at minding the store and is very focused on
Speaker:every dollar and every penny of the money that goes in and out of our firm.
Speaker:And I think it's really critical that every business,
Speaker:every law firm have somebody like that,
Speaker:that is just laser focused on the books, on the money,
Speaker:on the expense side of the equation.
Speaker:And the person who does it for us is a woman named Christine.
Speaker:Christine came to us without that high level of experience.
Speaker:She's not an accountant, she's not a CPA,
Speaker:did not have experience even really as a bookkeeper or a controller,
Speaker:but has learned our business from the ground up,
Speaker:has demonstrated a high level of interest and growth in learning that
Speaker:field. And Jeff,
Speaker:you set her up with a mentor who is teaching her all the detailed
Speaker:elements of financial accounting and reporting and controls.
Speaker:I think she's been really excellent in that job and we feel very
Speaker:comfortable,
Speaker:is 100% on top of the numbers and prepares extremely valuable
Speaker:reporting that allow us to see the high level of transparency,
Speaker:exactly what's going on at every moment in time in our business.
Speaker:As the firm has grown dramatically over the last two years,
Speaker:we've made a number of changes or additions.
Speaker:I think the first thing you want to look for is not only someone that has the
Speaker:acumen to do that, but somebody that you implicitly trust.
Speaker:I think that I can speak for myself and the senior management team here.
Speaker:If there's a penny missing,
Speaker:Christine is going to go digging for it and we implicitly trust her numbers and
Speaker:the work product she puts.
Speaker:Out.
Speaker:As we continue to grow,
Speaker:we used a very small independent local bookkeeper and it was not
Speaker:keeping up with our growth. So we transitioned. We interviewed a CPA firm,
Speaker:a good size firm that did bookkeeping.
Speaker:We interviewed a large bookkeeping firm out of state,
Speaker:went with a large bookkeeping firm out of state who was supporting us and
Speaker:getting the information back to us.
Speaker:And as Christine likes to say,
Speaker:QuickBooks is her source of truth and it matches everything well before
Speaker:month end. And to Ben's point,
Speaker:to continue to increase Christine's knowledge base, we have a mentor,
Speaker:for lack of a better term,
Speaker:who's a CPA that works with her multiple times a month on one-on-one sessions,
Speaker:talking about reporting, extracting numbers,
Speaker:and Christine delivers that product weekly.
Speaker:That's probably something else we should talk about.
Speaker:We meet weekly and go through our finances, and.
Speaker:It's.
Speaker:Important to meet that often,
Speaker:especially when you're a contingent fee firm and you're seeing what
Speaker:your cash flow looks like over certain periods of time.
Speaker:But we've done a lot of good things and Christine continues to grow and excel in
Speaker:that role.
Speaker:You had mentioned earlier the challenges of doing financial projections with a
Speaker:contingent fee-based firm, and I said we would return to that.
Speaker:So let's talk about that issue now and we'll just walk through
Speaker:how we do it.
Speaker:And it's been pretty successful in terms of allowing us to predict
Speaker:to within a pretty narrow range where we're going to be
Speaker:financially. Say for the last several years,
Speaker:we've had budget targets for revenue based on our case inventory and our
Speaker:projections,
Speaker:and we've come in within five or 10% up and down on that revenue year in
Speaker:and year out. And honestly,
Speaker:we did the same thing when I was at my prior firm for 17 years.
Speaker:And every year you go into it with a plaintiff's side practice thinking this
Speaker:just might be the year everything goes south and we have these projections,
Speaker:but it's not going to pan out and I'm really worried about it. And you might go
Speaker:several months without any of the big cases coming in and your worry increases
Speaker:almost every year. I mean, without exception,
Speaker:we were right where we projected we would be within a small bandwidth.
Speaker:So even though on its face,
Speaker:it appears much more subject to variability than kind of the banking
Speaker:model or the hourly rate practice. In my experience,
Speaker:if you plan right and you have enough diversity of work
Speaker:across enough different lawyers doing that work and you have robust systems to
Speaker:project, you're going to come in,
Speaker:you should be able to do a reasonable job projecting where you're going to be.
Speaker:The way we do this is it starts out with our case inventory that
Speaker:all of our attorneys responsible for cases are managing.
Speaker:And we have what we call the ABCD list,
Speaker:which was something that one of my former mentors at my old firm came up with.
Speaker:And once a quarter we have meetings with all of the lawyers in the
Speaker:office where we do an A, B, C, D list planning meeting.
Speaker:And what the different denominations are for us,
Speaker:the A cases are cases that we expect to settle within the
Speaker:current fiscal year, the year that we're working on. So this year, 2026 cases.
Speaker:These cases are going to get done in 2026. They're the qualified cases,
Speaker:the significant cases that we've talked about in prior episodes.
Speaker:The B list are future cases,
Speaker:so the ones that are going to resolve in a year in the future
Speaker:after this year. The C cases are ones that are not qualified.
Speaker:They're just kind of what we would call sort of cash flow,
Speaker:lower value cases. Now,
Speaker:our practice has evolved to the point where we really shouldn't have any C cases
Speaker:in our litigation team practice anymore. Historically though, we had some,
Speaker:so that's kind of this residual bucket where these cases would be.
Speaker:The reason they're in C is because they don't really tend to have a major
Speaker:financial impact because they tend to be smaller cases we took for a variety of
Speaker:reasons, but they don't move the needle that much,
Speaker:but you want to keep track of them.
Speaker:And then the category D are things we flag as problems.
Speaker:It doesn't mean there's an active problem going on in the case,
Speaker:but it's potentially a case type that's atypical for us or where there's an
Speaker:issue that's unusual that we have to keep special track of.
Speaker:For example, in our current practice,
Speaker:we have a case where we represent a hundred victims of a mass
Speaker:shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
Speaker:We tend to keep that in the D column because it's just a unknown animal.
Speaker:There's a lot of different moving parts.
Speaker:It's complex and we want to just segregate it out from everything else.
Speaker:So what we do is once a quarter we meet and each lawyer or team
Speaker:that's responsible for each case on their list has to go through the list,
Speaker:identify their A, B, C, D cases,
Speaker:and then for each of their A cases,
Speaker:identify what the likely projected settlement or
Speaker:resolution value of the case will be and what month they
Speaker:anticipate that it will resolve in.
Speaker:And when all of that information is obtained,
Speaker:Christine can then plug that into our system and it will generate
Speaker:projections in terms of when cases are likely to resolve and for how much.
Speaker:Christine's system also knows whether there's a referring attorney that's
Speaker:expecting to get a referral fee.
Speaker:It knows what our fee percentage is in each case.
Speaker:It knows what the costs are in each case. So with Christine's
Speaker:system, once that data is in,
Speaker:it can project out month to month what our expected cash flow and
Speaker:revenue will be from the inventory of cases that we have.
Speaker:Yeah. I think another important thing that we do is we are relatively
Speaker:conservative in our estimates. So Ben can correct me if I'm getting this wrong,
Speaker:but if we have a case and let's say there's $15,000 worth of potential insurance
Speaker:coverage, we will talk to the attorneys and say, look,
Speaker:what do you want to project for this?
Speaker:What would your client take if this went to mediation and not trial?
Speaker:What is the number that you think you would settle for and get?
Speaker:Well, if there was $15,000, we wouldn't take the case.
Speaker:$15 Million, sorry. $15 million of insurance coverage. Sorry, $15,000.
Speaker:$15 million. And if the attorney says, all right, you know,
Speaker:anything above eight we would take, we would not budget for a $15 million.
Speaker:We might budget for $8 or $10 million. And it is a moving target, obviously,
Speaker:depending on the status of the cases.
Speaker:And I would say one thing that we've been better at,
Speaker:and we weren't very good when I first started sitting in these meetings,
Speaker:is sometimes attorneys would show up and they had a case that was projected to
Speaker:settle in two months and we'd get to them. They'd be like, oh,
Speaker:push it out another three months, push it out another three months. Well,
Speaker:that's going to be next year in March now with really not a lot of context
Speaker:behind it.
Speaker:And I think Ben and Taylor and the leadership team has been better of holding
Speaker:them to, well, why? Why is it not September? What's going on?
Speaker:What are your roadblocks? Why are we pushing it out to next year?
Speaker:And holding people more accountable, which is helpful.
Speaker:Yeah. In terms of the conservative nature, we try to...
Speaker:The number that we put,
Speaker:what we're asking lawyers to put on the A, B, C,
Speaker:D projection list is not what they believe to be the
Speaker:maximum targeted value of the case.
Speaker:It's what if the case were to resolve for a compromised
Speaker:value,
Speaker:what's sort of the lowest number that we could see
Speaker:taking for the case. A number that we would need, in other words,
Speaker:because anything less, we just wouldn't entertain taking.
Speaker:So it's important that, although that's what we budget for,
Speaker:that is very different from what we internally discuss as what the
Speaker:right value for the case is or
Speaker:what we are expecting our lawyers to get in the case.
Speaker:And then in addition, we have an upward limit.
Speaker:So for cases that we have many cases where we might have a life care plan that's
Speaker:five or $10 million,
Speaker:economic losses that add to that. So well into eight figures
Speaker:just in economic loss damages.
Speaker:We cap our budgeted case value at 10 million no matter what
Speaker:the actual value of the case is because we don't want to skew it with very
Speaker:high outsized numbers on our biggest cases,
Speaker:putting too many eggs in the basket of just those few very large cases.
Speaker:So a case that has a value of 25 million,
Speaker:we still only budget it for 10 million. So it builds in...
Speaker:We would never take 10 million in that case,
Speaker:but we budgeted for that just to have very conservative budgeting.
Speaker:That ABC meeting we do quarterly, that gets presented,
Speaker:even though we only meet quarterly,
Speaker:it gets presented every single Monday at our Monday meeting on our rolling four
Speaker:month case settlement list.
Speaker:So Christine will pull up the slide that's generated from what people
Speaker:project in their quarterly meetings and she will say, okay,
Speaker:we're in August now, so August, September, October,
Speaker:November. We can see every month,
Speaker:we can see every practice team and it lists there which cases that they've
Speaker:said they're promised are likely to get done in each month. And then she says,
Speaker:are there any changes to this?
Speaker:So if somebody's going to change that because a case they promised to get done
Speaker:in November is no longer going to get done in November,
Speaker:they're going to have to speak up at a Monday meeting and state so in front of
Speaker:everybody. And it gives an opportunity just to hold people accountable,
Speaker:understand if they didn't meet their projections, why they didn't meet it,
Speaker:what's the change, and it's a very useful planning tool.
Speaker:So every week you mentioned we have these weekly finance meetings,
Speaker:and in connection with that,
Speaker:Christine prepares reporting that she sends all of us in advance,
Speaker:and there's three basic reporting spreadsheet documents that are extremely
Speaker:useful to all of us in keeping and managing the financial elements of the
Speaker:practice. So the three documents she sends us that we go over in those weekly
Speaker:meetings, one is our IOLTA account.
Speaker:So that lists all of the cases that have settled where
Speaker:we either have money that has come in and been deposited into
Speaker:our client trust account, our IOLTA account,
Speaker:or we're still waiting for funds.
Speaker:And one of the things we track very closely in our practice are the
Speaker:days from settlement to receipt of and disbursement of funds.
Speaker:Because when you think about the velocity of the practice,
Speaker:there's many places where the cash flow can be slowed down.
Speaker:One is right on the front end of cases: getting them evaluated,
Speaker:getting them filed, moving them forward.
Speaker:One of them is in the litigation process: extending deadlines,
Speaker:not getting things done as promptly as they could be,
Speaker:not moving the case forward as fast as it could.
Speaker:But then I think one area where people often forget is after the case has
Speaker:settled,
Speaker:that doesn't mean that you've paid yourself or your client a single dollar yet.
Speaker:There's still an entire process that has to occur.
Speaker:When you have complex cases involving millions of dollars,
Speaker:things like minor settlement approval,
Speaker:court approval of fees, perhaps doing trusts,
Speaker:special needs trusts,
Speaker:there's a long list of things - that process can take some time and it requires
Speaker:real effort to move it forward and get things done.
Speaker:And so we carefully track time from resolution to payment,
Speaker:and we have goals in terms of the timeline we're looking to meet there.
Speaker:So that's one of the things Christine sends around each week.
Speaker:The next document she sends around is our case cost activity.
Speaker:So that tells us what we've spent in the last week in case costs,
Speaker:just in the money we're spending to litigate our active cases.
Speaker:And that's a good snapshot just to see was there a very large expense that was
Speaker:paid in a particular case? If so, why was that paid? What was that expense for?
Speaker:And we can use that to track our monthly budget that we have for
Speaker:what we expect to be paying for case costs, which in our case,
Speaker:it's about $200,000 a month,
Speaker:and then we can measure that against where we stand per year in terms of what
Speaker:we've actually spent in case costs.
Speaker:We've actually been fortunate in coming in slightly under budget on our case
Speaker:cost budgeting in 2026.
Speaker:It's also very useful to see where are your case costs being spent?
Speaker:And we know that now from tracking this week to week for a long period of time,
Speaker:that the vast majority of that goes to experts.
Speaker:So that's document two that we review each week.
Speaker:And then document three is really where the heart of our case planning comes
Speaker:from,
Speaker:and it's extremely valuable document. It's what we focus on for our
Speaker:financial health of our firm week to week.
Speaker:And that's what Christine calls projections.
Speaker:And the way that works is that it takes the cases from the ABCD
Speaker:list and from the four-month rolling settlement list that we review every
Speaker:week. It assumes that the cases that we plan to get done are going to get done,
Speaker:and then it winds that into our cash flow with recovery of costs
Speaker:from those cases,
Speaker:the percentage of those cases that we're going to earn as a fee,
Speaker:depending on whether we have referring lawyer or no referring lawyer,
Speaker:what the fee percentage is in the case,
Speaker:and then what percentage of that recovery goes to our rainy day fund,
Speaker:what percentage of it goes to paying taxes,
Speaker:and what percentage of it goes to what we project we're going to pay the lawyers
Speaker:who have worked on the case in bonuses. And then what the net of that is
Speaker:what is our ending balance that we have in our operating
Speaker:account to pay future costs or to pay ourselves to take a distribution
Speaker:as owners.
Speaker:And then knowing what our case costs and our operating costs are per month,
Speaker:Christine can then project how many weeks of costs
Speaker:in our operating account that covers.
Speaker:So do we have 25 weeks of we can run the firm for 25 weeks with
Speaker:the money that's currently in our operating account or projected to be in it at
Speaker:the end of December, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:One thing I really like about this system is in the past when we took owner
Speaker:distributions, Taylor and I would pay ourselves,
Speaker:but that was pre-tax money.
Speaker:And so we then had to pay taxes ourselves after we got our
Speaker:distributions.
Speaker:And it became fairly challenging to budget for that for me on a
Speaker:personal level, because if you're getting $500,000 in a distribution,
Speaker:for example,
Speaker:it's not really $500,000. It's really closer to about 250 or $300,000
Speaker:after taxes, but those taxes aren't necessarily due immediately.
Speaker:They might be due at a quarterly estimate or the balance at the end of the year.
Speaker:And so there could be a tendency to spend more of the money than you really had
Speaker:because that money was an illusion because a lot of it was taxable.
Speaker:And if you're a W-2 employee, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker:Your taxes are taken out for the most part before you get your money.
Speaker:And so when you get your money, you know that's your money.
Speaker:Now the firm manages that for us, pays our taxes.
Speaker:So when we get a distribution,
Speaker:that's our money and it just makes it much simpler to account for everything.
Speaker:We also, because we take the non-owner bonus money,
Speaker:the tax money and our rainy day money and all put it in an account that
Speaker:is a high interest bearing savings account,
Speaker:we're able to earn money on that money that we're saving for taxes and for
Speaker:paying bonuses at the end of the year. And it's not an insignificant amount of
Speaker:money with the amount of money we're talking about. So that's a lot,
Speaker:but let me turn it over to you, Jeff.
Speaker:Yeah, I don't have a ton to add to that. It was a great recap,
Speaker:but those three reports that we look at weekly really help the
Speaker:senior team make determinations on how we're going to go in certain
Speaker:directions. And especially the weekly free cash,
Speaker:which is what I like to call operating cash.
Speaker:When we look and we're starting to get under double digits and we have less than
Speaker:10 weeks of operating cash in our operating account,
Speaker:we really start looking at, okay, but X, Y,
Speaker:and Z is coming in and why hasn't that check come in yet? It's been 45 days.
Speaker:And we really start focusing as much as possible. Again,
Speaker:that comes back to accountability of getting funds in,
Speaker:but the maturation over the last two years of our
Speaker:reporting and our tracking and everything,
Speaker:I'm actually excited because we're coming into budget time and I know we don't
Speaker:have time to talk about that,
Speaker:but we went from probably a two-page relatively cursory
Speaker:budget to I'm reviewing the draft of this year's budget for '27
Speaker:and there's 892 line items on it.
Speaker:Which says what you need to know about Christine right there.
Speaker:And that's probably a pared-down version.
Speaker:When she proposed a meeting to go through every budgeted line item one at a
Speaker:time, we were smart to say,
Speaker:let's just do them in tranches because that would be a little tedious.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:But I think the biggest takeaway to people listening to this is if you're not
Speaker:looking at your financials, at your cash flow,
Speaker:at your pipeline on a weekly basis and you're just kind of
Speaker:winging it or looking at it quarterly,
Speaker:the benefits to looking at it weekly are massive.
Speaker:And it's not a huge time suck on the senior management team.
Speaker:It's behind the scenes putting the reporting together.
Speaker:But our finance meetings are under a half-hour. This isn't a half-day meeting.
Speaker:It's under a half-hour.
Speaker:They get a good snapshot and an understanding of exactly where the firm stands
Speaker:as of that day.
Speaker:Yeah. I mean,
Speaker:many weeks we get through it in about 15 minutes because the reporting documents
Speaker:are the same week to week and we all understand what they mean.
Speaker:And so it doesn't take a long time for us to get a snapshot.
Speaker:It's only as good as the information that flows into it. And so like you said,
Speaker:it's the backup systems that allow us to have real time current data on the
Speaker:financial health of the firm. So if we see,
Speaker:hopefully we won't get to this point,
Speaker:but we have only a week left of money in the account or five
Speaker:weeks left, we know, okay,
Speaker:we need to take a draw on our line of credit or we would tap into our rainy day
Speaker:fund. Let's get out ahead of it.
Speaker:Or there's a big case that's sitting in our IOLTA account and we just need to
Speaker:disburse it. There's three things we need to do to check the boxes and get it
Speaker:done and move that into our operating account.
Speaker:But we've never really been at that point. We're usually looking eight, 10,
Speaker:12 weeks out at a minimum and being able to plan accordingly.
Speaker:So given time crunch, let's call it a day.
Speaker:I think we had been overly ambitious that we could cover budgeting and also
Speaker:one of the other things we've done is an outside audit just to keep ourselves
Speaker:accountable, make sure we have appropriate financial controls.
Speaker:And if there's anything we're missing or Christine is missing or God forbid
Speaker:there's any untoward activities happening anywhere within our practice,
Speaker:we have some other set of eyeballs on it,
Speaker:which I think when you get to a certain level of revenue is pretty important.
Speaker:I think we should table those topics and cover them at a future episode.
Speaker:Yeah, no, I agree. That was good, Ben. All right.
Speaker:See you at Fletch Night.
Speaker:Can't wait.
Speaker:Thanks for listening to Elawvate: Build and Grow Your Law Firm.
Speaker:Share with colleagues if you found it valuable. Remember,
Speaker:building a successful law firm takes discipline, strategy, and determination,
Speaker:but you're not alone. Produced and powered by LawPods.