Robert Mowbray

Partner, Taylor Mowbray LLP

Robert is an accountant who has worked in and with professional service firms for 30 years and who is an expert on law firm profitability and management. He has provided training and consultancy services to over 1,000 firms across 30 countries. His clients have included everything from the largest City and Global firms, through large regional firms and down to the most entrepreneurial smaller firms. He is regularly asked to help with a wide range of issues including time recording, pricing and fee negotiation, project management, accelerating cash flow, strategy, profit sharing arrangements and improving the quality of management information . Robert is the author of “Maximising the profitability of law firms” and was the author of the Law Society’s annual financial benchmarking survey from 2006-2009. He is the author of “Law firm finance and administration handbook – A practical guide for COFAs and finance professionals” and writes the annual NatWest financial benchmarking survey. He has been voted “Trainer of the year” by the Legal Education & Training Group and is an Industrial Fellow of the Business School at Kingston University. Robert trained in the early 1980s with PWC and spent 20 years as a partner at Macintyre Hudson LLP before setting up Taylor Mowbray LLP with Janet Taylor in 2009 to be a niche and independent advisor to professional service firms.

Contributed to

11

Benchmarking—what are normal measures of financial performance in a law firm?

Practice notes

This Practice Note provides information about different ways of measuring financial performance in a law firm. It also provides guidance on how to analyse and benchmark financial data to compare performance against previous years and competitors.

Practice Management

Cash flow and bank financing

Practice notes

This Practice Note provides an understanding of what might cause a law firm to fail and what the bank will be looking for if it is to continue to support the business with additional finance.

Practice Management

Dealing with fee pressure—creative fees and fee negotiation

Practice notes

This Practice Note provides an understanding of how to deal with the constant pressure from clients to discount fees. It discusses some creative fee arrangements and looks at how solicitors can learn to negotiate fees with more confidence.

Practice Management

Delivering client services more efficiently

Practice notes

This Practice Note explains why it is so important to improve the efficiency with which work is done and how this can be achieved without diluting quality.

Practice Management

How to read and understand the financial accounts of a law firm

Practice notes

This Practice Note provides information about how to read and understand the financial accounts of a law firm.

Practice Management

Monitoring your financial stability—looking out for the warning signs

Practice notes

This Practice Note looks at some of the most common causes of financial instability in law firms and suggests what needs to be done to ensure problems never develop into crises.

Practice Management

Options for law firm finance

Practice notes

This Practice Note provides guidance on why a law firm might need finance and the ways in which such finance might reasonably be obtained. It also considers how much debt is healthy and when it becomes excessive.

Practice Management

Predicting fee income and expenditure

Practice notes

This Practice Note sets out different methods for predicting your annual fee income and expenses.

Practice Management

Raising the financial awareness of your staff

Practice notes

This Practice Note considers how you might set about improving your staff’s financial awareness so they might be more inclined to, and more skilled at, ensuring you hit your financial targets.

Practice Management

The importance of good management information

Practice notes

This Practice Note provides an understanding of why management information (MI) is needed and how it should be formatted and distributed to achieve a change in behaviour of managers and improved financial performance.

Practice Management

The importance of good time recording

Practice notes

This Practice Note is intended for law firms. It explains why time recording is so important. It also explores best practice around time recording and considers the impact on write-offs if more time is captured.

Practice Management