The firm
DMH Stallard provides a comprehensive range of commercial, dispute resolution and litigation, employment, cyber security and cyber-crime, corporate, intellectual property, real estate and technology, media and telecoms advice to both businesses and individuals. Our clients, our people and our professional networks are the keys to our success.. With offices in London and across the region, including Brighton, Gatwick, Guildford, Horsham, and Hassocks - we're proud to have grown to around 380 people.
Culture really matters to us. In our most recent staff survey, 99.6% of our people said DMH is a great place to work, with 90% feeling they have a strong work-life balance, and 93.9% expressing confidence in the leadership team.
We're committed to building a genuinely inclusive and supportive workplace. Our Women in Law group meets quarterly, and we're actively working toward gender balance at all levels. We already exceed the industry average, with 40% of our partners being women compared to the sector average at 29%.
We actively invest in learning and development at all career stages. Our mentoring programme is available to all partners, and we are preparing to launch an internal mentoring programme to support progression right up to partnership. We also recognise that work-life balance is essential to long-term success and wellbeing, and we promote hybrid working arrangements to help our people perform at their best inside and outside of work.
We're also especially proud to achieve gold accreditation from Investors in People, which reflects our strong commitment to people development and leadership.
The department
Job Overview
A newly created role to provide commercial analysis, insight, support and advice to the business to improve commercial awareness and financial understanding across the business, help achieve revenue growth and profitability targets and improve business performance. The role will work closely with the Finance Director, Financial Controller, the wider Accounts department, as well as business partnering with group / department heads and fee earners as required.
Commercial Finance Responsibilities And Duties
* Work with the business to build annual revenue and contribution budgets.
* Produce monthly revenue and contribution reports.
* Management of fee earner revenue targets.
* Review and monitoring performance against targets.
* Provide commentary and variance analysis in comparison to budget and prior year.
* Forecasting revenue and contribution performance.
* Develop a detailed understanding of fee earner performance - individually as well as in aggregate at group / department level.
* Provision of regular and ad-hoc financial analysis, including monitoring of KPIs.
* Analysing and understanding KPI's and performance metrics for groups, departments, or types of work.
* Analysis of financial performance at client and matter level, focussing on key clients.
* Design and input into provision of commercial accounting information to the business.
* Benchmarking performance and KPIs internally as well as against external data sources.
* Pricing support – assist fee earners as needed in pricing discussions, input into charge-rate review processes.
* Post completion reviews of matters – identifying where we have done well and where we can improve (e.g. analysing recovery rates, resourcing of matters, reasons for write off's).
* Assist with potential lateral recruitment / merger due-diligence and post-recruitment/merger reporting and analysis.
* Assist in calculating performance related remuneration schemes for fee earners and partners.
* Identify areas for further investigation and follow up with the business as needed.
* Ensure accurate and timely financial reporting.
* Identify areas for improvement and efficiency gains in the monthly reporting cycle.
* Maintain / improve quality of underlying financial data and assist in developing improved systems and processes.
Other information
Knowledge, Skills And Experience
* Knowledge and experience of providing commercial accounting support, including profitability analysis, forecasting and budgeting.
* Business partnering with non-finance staff, helping them understand and assess financial / commercial implications.
* Ability to build good working relationships with all contacts both inside and outside the firm.
* Excellent IT skills, including advanced Excel skills, experience of report design / writing, and using finance and accounting systems.
* Experience of working in a law firm with Aderant
* Ability to design and run SQL reports
* Knowledge of Solicitors Accounts Rules
* Well organised and able to work under pressure to strict deadlines.
* Focus on continuous improvement and a pro-active approach to problem solving.
* Strong sense of teamwork and hands on attitude
* Experience of annual audit process.
* Senior accountancy qualification (eg ACA, ACCA or CIMA).
* High level of accuracy and numeracy.
Benefits
* 25 days holiday (of which 3.5 are taken during the Christmas period), plus Birthday holiday, plus Bank Holidays.
* Life Assurance
* Private Healthcare
* Employee Assistance Programme
* Sodexo Discounts
* Pension Scheme
* Interest free season ticket loans
* Cycle to work scheme
* Discounts on Legal work