Name: Tony Roe Solicitors
Based: Reading
Website: www.tonyroesolicitors.com
We are one of the few family law teams operating all forms of dispute resolution, mediation, collaborative law and arbitration, and one of the first such niche solicitors’ practices nationally. We are small, so cash matters that much more to our team.
Cashflow makes or breaks a firm. Without cash, salaries and creditors go unpaid. Most traditional law firms offer 30 days’ credit. However, a lot of further costs can be built up for a client in that credit period. If they default then you have at least another month’s fees unpaid.
We give the best cost information possible to avoid surprises. We adopted terms of business specifying that our bills were payable on delivery. Then, instead of simply posting them out, we sent them by email so delivery was immediate.
Our relationship statement is updated constantly, so we can down tools as soon as one or more of our bills remains unpaid. This means that we limit even further our potential exposure to unpaid fees.
We have also just changed our payment on account policy. Rather than cheques at the first meeting, we require electronic bank transfers in advance before the meeting can happen. While we bill on an interim basis, the payment on account is used towards the final bill, requiring interim bills to be paid in full. That way we always have money in hand to cover any bill were it to go unpaid. These elements are having a very positive impact on our figures.
Tony Roe is the principal of Tony Roe Solicitors
