Essential finance for lawyers

Does this sound like you?

• You're already a successful lawyer and now planning to set up your own firm?
• You have completed your Legal Practice Management Course or are planning to complete it?
• You want to ensure your organisation can be financially sustainable?
• You want to assist your clients achieve their financial goals?
• We know you're amazing with words, and have a fabulous rapport with your clients, but can you confidently talk through a client's balance sheet with them, or draft appropriate purchase price clauses in the Deed of Sale to get your client the best deal?
• Like many lawyers you've got a reasonable idea of the financial side of business. It takes you a while to wrap your head around financial statements, but you usually get there in the end.  You'll always find more important things to do than look at your organisation's accounts, and if you have the option you'll delegate managing the financial aspects of the Firm to someone else.

Quoting from a Perth based managing partner of a commercial law firm:

“It’s a well-known joke that lawyers aren’t generally great at crunching numbers. But as commercial lawyers we know the importance of understanding numbers and financial statements. This is why we sent our team to attend Debbie’s workshop earlier this year. Debbie was able to explain quite complex finance reporting concepts in a very easy to understand way. If you haven’t attended Debbie’s workshop yet, you need to!”

So, if you want to hit the ground running when it comes to financial management by brushing up on your financial literacy,

This is the workshop for you!

Workshop Overview

In collaboration with The College of Law, Essential Finance for Lawyers is finance training done in a very different and unique way.  Lawyers tend to be better with words than they are with numbers, which is why lawyers love this finance workshop.   It's a language based approach to gaining a conceptual understanding of accounting.  The material appeals to visual learners; lots of diagrams and lots of colour. The learning method is hands-on and fun.

This workshop is accredited for 6 CPD points in Practice Management and business skills. 
10% discount available for College of Law alumni. 

Learning Objectives

• To be more comfortable reading and making sense of financial statements through:
• Seeing the bigger picture in understanding how accounting works. Visually creating a picture of how a balance sheet balances, and the inter-relationship between the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement.
• Deciphering accounting jargon into plain english.
• Understanding basic concepts like accruals, depreciation and amortisation.
• Grasp how typical business transactions impact financial reports.
• Know where to start and what questions to ask when looking at the financial statements of clients or the Practice. 

Learning Outcomes

1. Engage confidently in financial conversations. Be able to talk about financial aspects of a commercial transaction or litigation matter, avoiding confusion and misunderstandings commonly encountered during client matters and dealing with financial experts.
2. Be able to review and interpret the story the financial statements are telling, identify potential commercial issues and ask relevant questions.
3. Draft financial clauses of agreements with knowledge of the meaning of key terms such as EBITDA, profit adjustments, adjusted net assets, purchase price variance or credit terms and conditions. 
4. Enhance value as a commercial adviser through a broader understanding of business by adding financial acumen to legal expertise.
5. Through this understanding of accounting language and interpretion of the financial statements, make an informed assessment of the value in a business. 
6. Complement the financial management module of the Legal Practice Management Certificate - ideal preparation to boost confidence. Or, as a follow on to cement understanding and bring together the practical aspects of pricing, profitabilty, utilisation, work in progress and debtors days on the overall financial performance of the Practice.