2-3 December 2009, London

2

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Book before 18 September 2009 and save £ 239

Two-day event

2-3 December 2009, London This brochure is printed using Forest Stewardship Council Accredited

Managing Partner magazine presents the fourth

Financial planning, budgeting and forecasting for law firms

Harnessing effective techniques to improve accuracy in an unpredictable economic climate

attendance at this event can count towards CPD for ICaEW members, if it meets the training and development needs relevant to the member's current role.

Planning, budgeting and forecasting in today’s unpredictable economic environment calls for an exceptional set of skills and the highest level of accuracy. aligning your business plan to the strategy, forecasting reliable revenue, and adopting rolling forecasts and budgets are just some of the complex and challenging tasks facing law firm finance teams, and with little room for error, it is essential these processes are done right. The benefits good planning, budgeting and forecasting can bring are extensive, but ultimately, it can significantly improve a firm’s profitability and in the current climate, enable firms to prepare, react and change with the times to counter difficult and unpredictable market conditions. Unless your firm’s planning, budgeting and forecasting processes are 100% robust, can you really afford to miss Managing Partner's Financial planning, budgeting and forecasting for law firms event? a two day event designed to help you plan, budget and forecast in an unpredictable economic climate to ensure a firm’s ultimate survival and growth. Hightlights include: • Brian Dunlop, Chief Financial Officer - London, Allen & Overy LLP: Driving accountability and ownership with forecasting and budgeting • Paul Chandler, Strategic Procurement Consultant, Simmons & Simmons: Managing your costs throughout the budgeting and forecasting process • Amanda Loran, Head of Finance, Clarke Willmott LLP: Forecasting revenue accurately and effectively • Aaron Le Cornu, Group Finance Director, Ogier: Leveraging the information produced from your plan, budget and forecast to maximum effect • Steve Billot and Tim Young, BDO Stoy Hayward LLP: an interactive workshop on implementing and managing rolling forecasts and budgets Researched by:

FDLegal

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Expert case studies and contributions from: Allen & Overy LLP Anderson Strathern LLP BDO Stoy Hayward LLP Blake Lapthorn Boyes Turner Brodies LLP Clarke Willmott LLP Consergo Ltd Hammonds LLP Jarrett-Kerr Consulting Ltd Lewis Silkin LLP Ogier Simmons & Simmons Wilkinson Read & Partners

tel: 020 7549 2500 e-mail: [email protected] fax: 020 7324 2373 web: www.ark-group.com or see back page for mailing details

Day 1 – Wednesday, 2 December 2009 09:00 Registration and refreshments

»» Getting the most out of your budgeting and forecasting tools »» The future and evolution of budgeting and forecasting tools Barry Wilkinson, Partner, Wilkinson Read & Partners

CHAIR’S OPENING REMARKS

09:30 Paddy Linighan, Director of Financial Planning, Hammonds LLP 09:45

Open keynote: Economic analysis and predictions »» Analysing current economic trends and forecasting the economy’s outlook for 2010 »» How will the economic conditions continue to affect law firms? »» Examining the impact of an unpredictable market on business planning, budgeting, and forecasting »» Preparing and positioning your law firm for a market recovery Andrew Hillman, COO, Blake Lapthorn & Corporate Finance Partner, Deloitte 1988-2006

13:15 Networking lunch break 14:15 Examining the different approaches to budgeting and devising an appropriate budget for your firm »» Identifying the purpose and target of your budget; is it for external reporting or internal targeting purposes? »» Assessing the pros and cons of zero-based, activity-based, incremental or a rolling approach to budgeting; how suitable, flexible, secure and robust are they in the current climate? »» Devising a suitable budget with realistic targets for fee earners to aim towards »» Offsetting different budgeting processes to identify inconsistencies »» Securing peer review into the budgeting process David R Edwards, Finance Director, Brodies LLP

10:30 Defining your firm's strategic goals and objectives »» Identifying your firm’s most profitable practice groups and clients and discarding the rest »» Incorporating innovative business practices such as outsourcing, offshoring, sub-contracting, leasing, automatic document drafting and workflow technology into your firm’s business model »» Restructuring departments and practice groups and getting rid of under-performing partners Edward Gordon-Hall, Finance Director, Lewis Silkin LLP

15:00 Afternoon coffee break 15:30 Forecasting revenue effectively

11:15 Morning coffee break 11:45 Developing your firm’s business plan in accordance with your firm’s strategic business objectives »» Drafting and aligning your financial plan with the firm’s business objectives »» Involving the partnership in the financial planning process »» Working closely with the business development function to form an integrated plan »» Resource planning and the role of finance in driving team optimisation »» Planning in an unpredictable market; incorporating changes in utilisation, leverage, available work, business development time into your plan Jeremy Sleap, Finance Director, Boyes Turner 12:30 Examining the available budgeting and forecasting tools »» Assessing the pros and cons of the current budgeting and forecasting tools »» Integrating budgeting and forecasting tools with your practice management system and tailoring to suit »» Making your financial information usable



»» Which measures, indicators or type of modelling can help with predicting turnover? »» Measuring revenue predictions against past revenue trends »» Opening the dialogue between finance and the fee earners to ensure everyone is kept in the loop »» Offsetting the budgeting process against the revenue pipeline »» Ensuring your model has built-in sensitivity analysis Amanda Loran, Head of Finance, Clarke Willmott LLP

16:15 Managing your costs throughout the budgeting and forecasting process »» Scrutinizing your direct and indirect cost base »» Implementing a cost reduction exercise »» Integrating new costs and the impact of those cost savings into the budget »» Effectively managing cost control to make the reforecasting process more efficient »» Incorporating changes in costs into the rolling budget Paul Chandler, Strategic Procurement Consultant, Simmons & Simmons 17:00 Chair’s closing remarks 17:15 Close of day one

Delegate comments from previous three events: »» “Normally, days such as this tend to have a 50% “hit-rate” in terms of relevance to what I’m interested in, today was as close to 100% as it gets…Excellent event.” Chris Hawley, formerly Director of Finance & Operations, Kemp Little LLP »» “Very useful – wide variety of topics and participants but all relevant to me.” Katie Briton, Ward Hadaway »» “Well worth attending.” Ray Black, Chief Operating Officer, Barlow Robbins LLP »» “Very good. I attended [the] conference last year and was worried [the] content would be similar, but delighted at the new issues addressed.” Amanda Loran, Head of Finance, Clarke Willmott »» “Excellent.” Peter Tibke, formerly Finance Director, Anthony Collins Solicitors »» “Very useful.” Derek Galliano, Finance Director, Triay & Triay »» “Good stuff!” Nigel Greg, Director of Finance and Administration, Shadbolt »» “V. good.” Des Murray, Director of Finance, Mason Hayes+Curran

tel: 020 7549 2500

fax: 020 7324 2373 e-mail: e

Day 2 – Thursday, 3 December 2009 09:00 Registration and refreshments

INTERACTIVE EMBEDDED WORKSHOP Implementing and managing rolling forecasts and budgets

CHAIR’S OPENING REMARKS

This highly interactive workshop will focus on how to devise and manage a rolling forecast and budget for your firm and will take the form of facilitated discussion around key areas drawn from BDO Stoy Hayward's considerable experience in advising professional service firms and from your own objectives and experiences.

09:30 Nick Jarrett-Kerr, Director, Jarrett-Kerr Consulting Ltd 09:45 Leveraging the information produced from your plan, budget and forecast to maximum effect » Providing partners with clear, manageable goals and linking business planning objectives to remuneration to encourage individual, department and office target setting » Monitoring actual performance against budget and identifying variances » Remediating areas of underperformance or increased expenditure » Using the budget as a lever to drive or manage real activity or behaviour Aaron Le Cornu, Group Finance Director, Ogier 10:30 Using scenario planning as a technique to reduce uncertainty and provide for contingency » Planning different scenarios for different financial events with the senior managers and heads of practice; securing their buy-in to scenario planning » Financing and modeling each scenario so each solution is carefully planned Alan McGhie, Director of Support Services, Anderson Strathern LLP

OR

Facilitated by Steve Billot, Director, and Tim Young, Senior Manager, BDO Stoy Hayward LLP with contributor Mark Feeney, Director, Consergo Limited and Founder Member, The Winning Firm Alliance 13:30 Introduction and welcome 14:00 Understanding how rolling forecasts and budgets work » How rolling forecasts and budgets work » Is it necessary to produce a rolling budget from a rolling forecast? » Assessing the benefits and limitations of rolling forecasts and budgets 15:15 Afternoon coffee break 15:30 Devising and managing a rolling forecast and budget for your firm » Creating and implementing a rolling forecast and budget » Educating the partners, department heads and management team and securing their buy-in 16:45 Summary

11:15 Morning coffee break

Steve Billot is a Director in the business restructuring team in London and specialises in dealing with Professional Practices. Having been the practice manager and then joint managing partner of a mid tier accountancy firm he understands the challenges of running a firm. He has particular expertise in the legal sector and in the last 18 months he has reviewed over 80 firms of all sizes and now lectures widely on the issues facing the profession.

11:45 Driving accountability and ownership with forecasting and budgeting » Identifying who’s accountable for what and how accountable each individual or team really is » Ensuring the firm’s culture supports a more pro-active lawyer approach to budgeting and forecasting and providing lawyers with the skills and training to be able to do it effectively » Testing the relevant parties to ensure their budget or forecast is sound » Ensuring the ramifications of not budgeting or forecasting effectively are clearly understood » Addressing accountability issues with sharing budget costs between teams or departments » Tailoring your management approach to each practice area depending on each area’s performance Brian Dunlop, Chief Financial Officer - London, Allen & Overy LLP

Tim Young currently works as a Senior Manager within BDO Stoy Hayward's Professional Services Sector Team. Before joining BDO Stoy Hayward, Tim was a Financial Controller with law firm Wedlake Bell. Prior to that, he worked with Ernst & Young in their Mid Market Sector team. Tim has experience of implementing enhanced management information tools in practice as well as managing local and global statutory audits. His current clients include a range of Top 100 law firms.

OR

Mark Feeney is Managing Director of Consergo Ltd and a founder member of the Winning Firm Alliance. Mark is an ACA who has been FD and CEO of substantial law firms and who now advises legal firms as a consultant. This has encompassed numerous instances of planning, budgeting and forecasting; including monitoring and reforecasting. Mark has recently written the Finance Chapter for the Law Society published Practice Management Handbook 2nd edition.

12:30 Networking lunch break

17:00

Chair's closing remarks

17:15

Close of conference

ADVISORY BOARD This event has been validated and researched with a broad range of finance professionals from across the legal profession. We are grateful for the ideas they have provided us with for the speakers and the programme content. In particular our special thanks go to the following for their invaluable input:

Sarah Wilkinson, Finance Director, FIELD FISHER WATERHOUSE LLP Ann Cummersdale, Director of Finance, MUCKLE LLP Chris Kemp, Finance Director, BENNETT GRIFFIN Laurence Milsted, Finance Director, FRESHFIELDS BRUCKHAUS DERINGER LLP Karl Wingfield, Chief Operating Officer, B P COLLINS Arthur Ferry, Finance Director, DWF LLP Chris King, Finance Director, DRUCES LLP Adrian Bourne, Partner & Chief Operating Officer, STEVENS & BOLTON LLP

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web: www.ark-group.com

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Financial planning, budgeting and forecasting for law firms

Two-day event

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BOOKING CONDITIONS 1. Bookings can be submitted at any stage prior to the event, subject to availability. A limited allocation is being held and booking early is therefore recommended. In the event of the booking not being accepted by Ark Group the total amount will be refunded. 2. Payment must be received in full prior to the course. 3. All speakers are correct at the time of printing, but are subject to variation without notice. 4. If the delegate cancels after the booking has been accepted, the delegate will be liable to the following cancellation charges:  Cancellations notified over 45 days prior to the event will not incur a cancellation fee  In the event of a cancellation being between 45 and 30 days prior to the event, a 20% cancellation fee will be charged  For cancellations received less than 30 days prior to the event, the full delegate rate must be paid and no refunds will be available 5. All bookings submitted by e-mail, fax, post, or over the telephone are subject to these booking conditions. 6. All cancellations must be received in writing. 7. Ark Group will not be held liable for circumstances beyond their control which lead to the cancellation or variation of the programme. 8. All bookings, whether UK or overseas will be charged UK VAT. 9. The prices quoted in Euros are the correct conversion rate at the time of print. 10. *This offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other Ark Group promotion or offer. 11. Ark Group reserves the right to reject any booking at any time prior to the event, without explanation. DATA PROTECTION Your details will be added to the Ark Group database in order to process your booking and inform you of related Ark Group events and publications. Ark Conferences Ltd would like to contact you with details of our products and services. If you do not wish to receive these please tick this box Ark Conferences Ltd would like to share your information with other carefully selected organisations. Please tick if you do not wish to receive this information PLEASE NOTE Ark Group cannot be responsible for assisting potential delegates in obtaining visas to the country in which this event is being held. Delegates are responsible for their own travel, and visa requirements.

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