Two episodes into our four-episode series with law firm CFOs one theme that's emerged is collections. Specifically, how much money lawyers and law firms leave on the table by failing to implement processes that ensure that the firm gets paid for the work it bills out.
Kevin Krese, CFO and COO at Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs, is thinking further upstream. Krese wants to make sure that all of the work that gets done gets billed. And, more importantly, that that time doesn't get written down before it even gets sent to the client. As one of the executive leaders at Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs, a 70-lawyer law firm based in Ohio, Krese has implemented a multi-step process that ensures that what the client is told that they'll pay is the amount that is billed to the client. And that very little of that billed time gets written down prior to sending the bills out the door.
But Kevin's no slouch when it comes to collections. We chatted about how Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs has a collections rate above 90% (spoiler alert: they use what we called a "collections lite" process, succession planning in law firms, how business leaders can teach lawyers to run their firms to run their firms like a business, and much more.
Listen to this episode to hear a growth-minded, business-oriented, law firm CFO/COO talk about how he helps run the business side of a rapidly expanding law firm.
