Finance and Accounting for Lawyers

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the language associated with finance
• Know how and when to use financial terms and analysis techniques
• Read and assess company performance using financial statements
• Recognize the link between organizational strategy and financial objectives
• Use “the numbers” to their best advantage to make more informed and sound decisions

Content

Introduction

• Introductions and course objectives
• Participants’ own needs and wants from the course

The Balance Sheet

• Understanding different Assets and Liabilities
• About Fixed Assets
• Current Assets – what they are and how to improve
• Current Liabilities – what they are and how to improve them
• Benchmarking and comparators
• Key Ratios and trends
• About Gearing

The Income and Expenditure Account (or Profit and Loss Account)

• The key components of the Income and Expenditure Account
• Analyzing Key ratios and trends
• Managing different types of Costs and their behavior
• Analyzing income streams
• Improving Profitability and Productivity
• The Power of 1%
• Profit/Surplus and Cash flow are different things

Management Accounts

• What Management Accounts
• How these figures contribute to overall performance
• Managing the cash flow as well as the costs
• Managing variances and making any necessary improvement

Using ratios to Benchmark Performance

• How to use the key ratios to benchmark our performance
• Recognizing areas where performance is slipping, and which need management attention

Generating Ideas to Improve Financial Performance, Including People’s Productivity

• Identifying and investing more in high performing assets and activities
• Identifying and improving underperforming assets and costs

Moving from Analysis to Forecasting

• The principles of Forecasting and Budgeting
• Revenue Budgets
• The strengths and problems of traditional budgeting methods
• 2 other approaches which can complement and improve traditional budgeting methods
• Budgeting for Projects – how to do a Cost-Benefit Analysis

Capital Expenditure

• Cost of Capital issues and the time value of money
• Where budgeting can go wrong and how to avoid the principal problems

Understanding the Jargon

• A free discussion clarifying any remaining questions about terminology and jargon
• Benchmarking and comparators

Training Methodology

The training methodology combines lectures, discussions, group exercises and illustrations. Participants will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of the topics. The emphasis is on the practical application of the topics and as a result participant will go back to the workplace with both the ability and the confidence to apply the techniques learned to their duties.