Lock-up is the number that runs a small firm
Add the days your work sits unbilled to the days your bills sit uncollected and you get lock-up: how long a docketed hour takes to become money. At $1,000,000 in annual billings, every 30 days of lock-up is roughly $80,000 of partner cash parked inside client files. That is the arithmetic behind a familiar feeling, a firm that earns well every year and still tightens up before every payroll.
We measure lock-up by matter type, because it is never one number. Hourly commercial work might turn in 60 days while a family file drifts past 150. The levers are ordinary and effective: interim billing written into the retainer agreement, evergreen retainers replenished before work continues, a standing billing day every month, and a partner who actually reviews the aged WIP list. None of this needs new software; it needs someone accountable for the number, which is what a Fractional CFO engagement is for.
A contingency file is an investment, so underwrite it like one
Every contingency file the firm signs is a capital commitment: your time at cost, plus cash disbursements for expert reports, medical records, transcripts and assessments, repaid only if and when the matter resolves. One file is a bet; twenty are a portfolio. We build a schedule showing disbursements advanced per file, months since intake and realistic resolution windows, then set an intake cap tied to the cash the firm can genuinely have outstanding, so a good year of signing files does not become a bad year of funding them.
Funding the float is a banking problem, and it helps that Walla Assaf spent years in banking and corporate finance before founding the practice. Some firms carry disbursements on an operating line; others use specialist litigation lenders whose interest has to be priced against the eventual fee. We prepare the lender package through Business Financing Advisory, and we leave the tax treatment of contingency WIP with the filing work, because the harder question is not how those files are taxed but how many of them you can afford to carry.
Draws come from a cash plan, not the bank balance
A partner draw policy protects the firm from its own good months. The pattern we unwind most often: collections spike, the account looks generous, the partners draw it, and next month the disbursement bills and payroll land on the line of credit. We set a working-capital floor first, enough to cover payroll, rent, insurance and the disbursement float, then size fixed monthly draws from a rolling 13-week cash forecast, with a quarterly top-up paid out of collected fees once the floor is intact.
The tax side of draws, reserves and instalments, is its own discipline and lives with our tax planning work. The CFO question is older and simpler: what can this firm pay its owners without borrowing to run itself.
Utilization, realization and the hire you are debating
Three ratios, tracked per timekeeper, explain almost every gap between a busy firm and a profitable one.
| Ratio | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Utilization | Hours docketed to client files against hours available; whether there is enough work, and who has it |
| Billing realization | Fees billed against the standard value of time docketed; write-downs happening before the bill goes out |
| Collection realization | Cash collected against fees billed; discounts, disputes and write-offs after the bill |
| Lock-up days | WIP days plus receivable days; how long an hour takes to become cash |
The pattern matters more than any single month. High utilization with weak billing realization usually means write-downs at the partner's desk, a pricing or supervision issue. Strong billing with weak collection points at client selection and billing habits. We build all of it from the practice-management data the firm already keeps and review it together monthly.
The same numbers price the growth decisions. An associate hire is a model, not a leap: salary, employer CPP and EI, LawPRO and a software seat on one side; a docket that takes months to fill, junior realization rates and the partner hours freed for better files on the other. We put a break-even month on the hire before you make it, and we run the identical exercise on office space, where a lease is a fixed commitment measured against revenue per lawyer, not against optimism.
Succession is built years before it is signed
A practice worth buying is one that runs on numbers a stranger can read. Most sole practitioners and two-partner firms have the opposite: clients attached to a name, profitability never measured by partner or by matter type, and no associate positioned to buy in. We start the succession file early, per-partner profitability, client concentration, a buy-in an associate can actually finance out of firm earnings, so when the conversation comes you negotiate from statements, not stories.
The engagement itself stays light: a monthly reporting pack, a quarterly working session, and a CPA who picks up the phone before you sign anything. We work with firms across Mississauga and the GTA, everything is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call, and the books that feed the reporting can run under the same roof through End-to-End Accounting.
