Working Capital Controller (permanent)

at  AO Shearman

Allen & Overy is a global industry-leading law firm, with 48 offices in 29 countries worldwide. Our fluency in English law, US law, and the laws of the world’s most dynamic markets, enables us to provide unmatched insight and seamless delivery to clients. We work on challenging and important deals and disputes that have the potential to shape the future.
We offer exceptional opportunities for our people; opportunities to work for the world’s leading businesses; to transform the status quo, and to deliver your best work, helping you and your career to thrive, while delivering unparalleled outcomes for our clients.
Whether you’re helping clients solve complex challenges, transforming the ways we manage our business, or ensuring the smooth-running of our operations, this is an environment where you can belong and excel. We provide first-rate training and development, we are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and we provide support and ways of working that help you optimise your wellbeing.

Key requirements

• have strong commercial skills and preferably be a qualified finance professional looking for a commercial role.
• have worked within the legal profession as a Revenue / Billing / Credit Controller or experience in the professional services industry - minimum of 3 years.
• Ability to operate under pressure and to multi-task and prioritise.
• Excellent communicator, able to work with senior people and share advice.
• Experience building and maintaining strong internal client relationships.
• Strong team-player who is also self-motivated.
• Good organisational skills and able to deal with urgent requests.
• Enthusiastic, pro-active, persistent person with a commitment to ‘getting the job done’.
• Aptitude for systems generally, willingness to follow process.
• Excellent office skills required, a knowledge of Elite 3E is an advantage

DEPARTMENT PURPOSE

To provide high quality financial information and support to the decision makers of A&O ensuring compliance with regulations while delivering services efficiently. The function is subdivided into Financial reporting (focused on meeting statutory and regulatory requirements), and working capital (concentrated on billing and debt management, along with pricing and matter analytics).

ROLE PURPOSE

• Act as the front line finance business support for a group of the MET partners, with focus on developing business partner and trusted advisor status.
• Managing all aspects of the billing process to ensure Work In Progress is processed, billed and sent to the client.
• Managing the credit control cycle, working with the business to ensure all debts are collected from clients as per standard payment terms.
• Enhancing profitability by building our matter management and profitability tracking.
• Developing pricing expertise to support the business on pre matter and post matter analysis.
• Working with MET Commercial Senior Finance manager to manage working capital metrics, with emphasis on minimising net investment, WIP and Debtor Balances.

Key relationships

• Partners
• Fee earners
• MET Commercial Senior Finance manager

ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Client financial lifecycle duties

• Responsible for the Finance section of the Matter Inception work flow process, ensuring accuracy and completeness of the related details.
• Managing rates in 3E and working with partners to ensure the matters are set up correctly and the client finance related requirements are fully understood as per the engagement letter.
• Creating the Rate Exception Group (REG) required based on client agreements including proper upload to 3E and related to comms to regional / global teams.
• Understanding of local and global client rate agreements, working with peers in other offices on global / regional client rate negotiations.
• Review of the finance provisions of Clients’ External Counsel guidelines, contracts, RFPs and providing advice regarding non-compliance with the firm’s standard terms of engagements and propose alternative wording.
• Regular meetings with Partners and Executive Assistants to review the working capital on their matters.
• Preparation of billing forecast ensuring data is up to date to give an accurate estimate of billings.
• Management of the BIlling process to comply with firm policies including processing of invoices.
• Comprehensive follow-up of action items, such as time transfer, time write off, dispatch of billing guides, disbursements, queries etc.
• Upload invoices to client supplier portals (ie. SAP Ariba) and continuous portal management including vendor registration and on-boarding.
• Management of credit control activities, working in tandem with business to achieve timely settlement of debts.
• Providing detailed financial information in support of bills, ie. hourly schedules, disbursements and narrative breakdowns. Preparation of client detailed billing schedules / reports as requested.
• Dealing with inquiries from clients, partners and fee earners relating to financial aspects of matters.
• Developing reports to comply with client requirements using the existing 3E generated outputs.
• Provide training to Legal PAs for bill and time narrative completion in 3E and on-going support.
• Liaise with Revenue Controllers across the network on cross unit billing matters.
• Monitor and implement appropriate internal controls.
• Coordinating with Belfast e-billing team including compliance with e-billing rules and requirements.
• Deal with tax issues relating to working capital which may be cross border in nature
• Management of bad debt write offs and provisions to minimise impact on the bottom line.

Relationship Management

• Build relationships with partners and other fee earners, ensuring they receive all relevant working capital and pricing information.
• Work closely with local financial reporting team to manage client money, WIP, bad debt provisions and disbursements.
• Develop relationship with hub finance teams, including FSG, to ensure MET is compliant with global policies.
• Manage finance relationships for key strategic clients, acting as the main point of contact for finance matters, managing global processes, reporting, credit control and volume discount.
• Establish and maintain good working relationships with external clients to facilitate the resolution of any issues that may arise.
• Pre-empt client queries by applying knowledge from prior engagement - identify potential risks and mitigate.

Advisory Role

• Participate in pricing discussions and provide profitability modelling to partners
• Assist in the generation and analytical review of business trends, profitability analysis and other key working capital performance indicators.
• Communicate effectively with Partners and provide useful management information to improve working capital and drive the business forward.
• Work with other functions ie Business Development / HR) in respect of client reporting, monitoring, strategy and developments.
• Analyse current billing and profitability information reporting and problem-solving including calculating PPP analysis of individual matters.
• Delivery, design and preparation of financial presentations, and ad hoc client reviews.
• Support projects impacting working capital process flow as and when required.

Key requirements

• have strong commercial skills and preferably be a qualified finance professional looking for a commercial role.
• have worked within the legal profession as a Revenue / Billing / Credit Controller or experience in the professional services industry - minimum of 3 years.
• Ability to operate under pressure and to multi-task and prioritise.
• Excellent communicator, able to work with senior people and share advice.
• Experience building and maintaining strong internal client relationships.
• Strong team-player who is also self-motivated.
• Good organisational skills and able to deal with urgent requests.
• Enthusiastic, pro-active, persistent person with a commitment to ‘getting the job done’.
• Aptitude for systems generally, willingness to follow process.
• Excellent office skills required, a knowledge of Elite 3E is an advantage.