Solicitors & barristers

Our specialist legal team was established more than a decade ago to provide accounting, taxation, training and consultancy advice to barristers and solicitors.  We also provide outsourced probate and trusts services to legal practices.  As an added bonus, because we’re accredited trainers with the Law Society, any training you or your team do with us will qualify for CPD purposes.

 

Barristers

 

We provide the full range of book-keeping, accounts and tax compliance services for barristers.  Just choose how you'd like us to help and rest assured that we understand the intricacies of the taxman's rules relating to barristers' accounts.  Naturally, our experts are also on hand to advice on wider tax planning issues as required.

Legal practices

Professional practices have probably never faced more challenging times – but the opportunities are also substantial for firms willing to embrace change and adapt to the way things are now.   We can help you to secure the future success for your firm.

Alongside our core services (see the Services menu), you’ll find an overview of our additional services exclusively for solicitors below.  If you want to explore how Sagars could work with your firm, just contact John Beevers (Partner) for an absolutely confidential discussion.

• Solicitors' Accounts Rules Audit
• Financial benchmarking
• Financial and cashflow management
• Interim financial manager services
• Outsourced services - helping to meet your clients' demands
• Specialist VAT advice for lawyers
• Succession planning
• Incorporating your practice or forming an LLP
• Buying or merging with another practice
• Selling your practice

 

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Solicitors’ Accounts Rules audit

If you hold client money you’ll normally need to have an audit under the Solicitors’ Accounts Rules 1998 (SAR).  As registered auditors, with years of SAR audit experience we are experts in this field.

We focus on compliance with the rules and, crucially identifying potential system improvements to benefit your firm.  We can also provide in-house training for either your finance team or your fee-earners on effective compliance with the rules (and our feedback tells us we even manage to make this interesting as well as practical and informative!).

 

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Financial benchmarking

 

Despite the changing nature of the professional services world, benchmarking remains one of the most powerful business techniques around.  You can systematically compare the detailed activities and performance of your practice with others to highlight opportunities perform even better. We can benchmark your practice nationally and regionally through our links with the HCWA.

Choosing the right benchmarking criteria is fundamental, and financial performance measures such as profit per partner, lock up and margins are a great place to start. Looking at chargeable hours, recovery rates, staff gearing and your charging structures are also keys to profitability.  After that, why not look for best practice ideas wherever they come from?  Your clients will be comparing your service in terms of speed, accuracy, availability and approachability - both within the legal profession and beyond.  It’s important that you do likewise.

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Financial and cashflow management

How does your finance function perform?  Could you save money or improve client care by doing things differently? Are your finances properly controlled? Do your fee-earners fully understand the rules for dealing with client and office money?  These are just some of the questions that our Finance Function Review can answer (and we’ll work with you to develop a practical action plan to make sure you benefit from the opportunities and recommendations highlighted.

 

Solicitors’ practices are particularly vulnerable to cash-flow problems due to lock up, the time taken to bill and collect cash from work-in-progress (WIP), not to mention the funds tied up in unbilled disbursements.  Very often, small changes to the procedures for billing/cash collection can bring great (and potentially practice-saving) improvements.

 

Our Cash-flow Assessment offers a structured way to look at your existing systems for managing cash-flow and your practice finances.  We’ll diagnose the problem areas (summarised in a straightforward report) and work with you to find practical solutions.

 

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Interim financial manager services

Whether it’s someone experienced or more junior, full or part time we can help to fill temporary gaps in your finance team, perhaps due to rapid growth, unexpected leavers, maternity leave etc.  We have experience in using a wide range of different solicitors’ accounting systems, so it won’t take us long to get up to speed with yours.

 

We’ll use our knowledge of your practice to find the right person for your needs and, unlike temporary staff you could appoint, we’ll be interested in our long term relationship with you so we’ll go the extra mile to be sure we get things right.

 

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Outsourced services – helping you meet your clients’ demands

How often do you find that beneficiaries of an estate are pressing you to wind it up, but you’re not sure if there are any residual tax liabilities, or you simply don’t have time to prepare the estate accounts?  Perhaps the beneficiaries of a trust want to see the latest trust accounts or forms R185, but your time’s taken up with more urgent client demands.

 

Through our specialist trusts and probate team, we’re able to help – giving you more valuable time to spend with your clients and allowing you to convert work-in-progress into fees.  We have probably one of the largest trust teams in the region (administering more than 400 settlements) and considerable probate experience. 

 

This strength of expertise (backed up by cost effective IT usage) means we can help you and your clients by:

• completing trust or estate accounts (in your firm’s style and logo), compiling tax returns and related forms and agreeing the tax liabilities
• providing a day to day trust administration service
• helping to set up trusts, trust reorganisations, appropriate funds to beneficiaries and the winding up of trusts tax efficiently
• advising on capital gains and income tax planning during the administration period of an estate
• providing a ‘health check’ to ensure that the deceased’s tax affairs are in order so that there are no unforeseen tax liabilities arising after the estate has been administered.

 

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Specialist VAT advice for lawyers

Our in-house VAT expert has the rare skill to make the complexities of VAT accessible and understandable, and it has been said on occasion, even interesting!

 

We can support you with answers to your ad-hoc VAT queries and give you practical advice on surviving HMRC inspections and investigations.

 

We also hold regular seminars and training events (in-house and public) covering the VAT issues that most concern the legal profession, such as:

• fee notes and disbursements
• partial exemption
• standard monthly payments

Land and property lawyers are usually aware that there can be VAT pitfalls, but aren't always sure what they are or how to avoid them. For example, partial exemption on business leases is a complicated area, with the potential for your client to incur substantial VAT costs which could influence the commerciality of a deal and, perhaps, the nature of your advice. By consulting our VAT specialist you can go beyond flagging partial exemption as a possible issue and give advice which your clients will need and value.

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Succession planning

Succession is a big issue for many of our professional practice clients.  Considering this early and thinking beyond the obvious financial implications is critical.  Examples of the help we can provide are:

• planning the succession
• valuing your practice
• ensuring a tax efficient approach
• developing the next generation of managers, partners and leaders
• handling partner under-performance
• recruiting 'new blood'

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Incorporating your practice or forming an LLP

 

We can advise you on the potential benefits and pitfalls of incorporation and limited liability partnerships and help you and your partner team to agree the best way forward for your practice.

 

Once a practice decision is made, we can guide and assist you very step of the way to make sure you cover all the angles and complete the change process as quickly as possible.

 

 

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Buying or merging with another practice

 

Our legal practice clients look to us for support in:

• finding acquisition or merger targets
• negotiating the purchase
• preparing a business plan for your new venture
• finding appropriate funding
• restructuring - changing the financial base of your practice to generate the capacity for investment and to create working capital
• planning a tax efficient approach
• undertaking due diligence on potential targets or merger candidates
• post-acquisition integration.

 

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Selling your practice

If you want to move out or move on, then we can help you with:

• preparing your practice for sale - looking at ways to maximise its value and make it easier to sell
• finding a buyer
• negotiating the sale
• planning a tax efficient approach
• dealing with the accounting and tax compliance issues.

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