Active matters will soak up a lot of cash before any fee income is earned.
Disbursements and Court Fees
Court filing fees and Land Registry searches are typical disbursements incurred by a law firm prior to the start of a case and are payable immediately. Such disbursements can quickly accumulate in a cash intensive period prior to any fee income being generated from a case. In accordance with the SRA guidelines on client money and disbursements, firms are not able to deduct such outgoings from a client’s account. We can assist in funding such disbursements to release immediate pressure on a law firm’s cash.
Counsel’s Fees
Counsel’s Fees – As mentioned above fees paid to Barristers can be huge and often incurred at short notice. Often these fees are incurred prior to the case turning into a “no win no fee” case and therefore there is no return on investment. We can facilitate these as a discrete draw.
Expert Witnesses A useful reference for Law Firm Finance is https://www.novo-modo.co.uk/commercial-finance-Legal-Firms.
In the majority of cases the payment on account for the report of a medical expert, a forensic accountant etc will be considerable (some cases even in the hundreds of pounds). In the majority of cases the report itself will be considerable (some cases even in the thousands of pounds). Finance can be used to fund these costs as they are incurred allowing the firm to obtain the necessary evidence for the case whilst it is current and not have to store it until such time as the case is bringing in money under a conditional fee agreement.
Litigation Support
Other costs associated with litigation such as process serving, document management and translation costs generally rise throughout a case. These costs are generally fundable under most commercial finance facilities and therefore should be applied for as part of an initial finance application rather than applied for individually as and when incurred.
Operational Costs Tied to Active Matters
Whether it’s the time spent by fee-earners and support staff on a case, software licenses and the like that are needed to deal with a busy practice, or your professional indemnity premiums that increase based on your practice’s workload – these are real pressures on law firms in practice. For commercial finance of this sort (finance structured around the cashflow patterns of legal practice) see Novo Modo.
Most important is to know what costs can be covered by finance.