Finance Business Partner

Shakespeare Martineau is a Top 50 law firm that combines creativity, commerciality and clarity. We work with blue-chip companies, leading organisations, high street brands and individuals across the country.

As enterprising and original thinkers, we’re driven to create exceptional experiences for our clients and our people. We handle personal and business-critical issues and game-changing deals across many dynamic sectors. It’s stimulating and rewarding.

We’re hardworking and deeply ambitious about creating opportunities for our employees; to move forward and achieve our ambition together. We provide an environment in which you’re supported to reach your potential.

Our people have a blend of excellent technical and business skills with the talent to do things differently.

Here you’ll find top quality work, cutting edge training, high profile clients, and supportive colleagues. We think it could be time you joined us.

To provide truly outstanding client service we work as one team.  Our Business Operations Group is made up of business professionals who work with our legal professionals to provide market leading expertise to our clients.  The Groups include; Finance, Operations, HR, Clients & Markets, IT, Risk and the Executive Leadership team.

Our Finance team is made up of over 40 people who work from a variety of our office locations. The work is split into four core areas; Financial Accounting, Financial Operations, Business Partnering and Partner Services.

The team work closely with our other business operations teams to provide a first class service. They are responsible for the sound financial management of the firm, including cash flow, budgeting, internal and external reporting and audit. They have responsibilities for the safe-keeping and operating of our clients’ funds held on account and also deal with payroll, credit control ‘Work In Progress’, partner finances and tax returns. The team also provide bespoke finance business partnering support to all other areas of the business.

The role:

We are looking for a Finance Business Partner to join our Birmingham-based Finance Team, part of the firm’s Business Operations group. 

Reporting to the Head of Finance (Firmwide), you will be part of the Firmwide Finance team of Analysts and Business Partners.  They work closely with the Groups to ensure the completeness and accuracy of underlying business data, and to provide Group Chairs and Team Leaders with insightful analysis and reporting to promote and improve commercial awareness and financial acumen.

Your key duties will be:

• driving financial understanding and responsibility within the Groups through the provision, and interpretation, of appropriate KPI’s, reports and statistics
• feeding back to the Head of Finance and CFO on the financial performance of the group and any issues they should be aware of
• supporting plans to improve financial performance across the group
• working with the Head of Finance (Operations) to ensure financial processes are as efficient as they can be, for both Fee Earners and Finance, whilst ensuring that they are SRA compliant and that they enable the best possible client experience in terms of financial interactions with the firm
• playing a key role in the annual budgeting process and interim re-forecasts
• educating and working with the Group to minimise lock-up
• presenting at the Group board meetings
• engaging regularly with team leaders to interpret and act upon the team leader financial reporting packs
• presenting at Group conferences and Team meetings, as required
• supporting the bid process for larger tenders
• monitoring and work with the Group on the profitability of key clients
• supporting the implementation of the new PMS system, with a particular focus on the reporting functionality
• undertaking projects and any other tasks, as directed by the Head of Finance

Skills and experience you will have:

• a CIMA or ACCA qualification (either qualified or in the later stages of acquiring relevant qualification)
• to be competent in Excel with the ability to handle large amounts of data (to include pivot tables and vlookups as a minimum)
• to be a confident presenter and public speaker
• previous experience in a Business Partner role, and the confidence to interact and influence with senior operational members of the firm
• ideally, the knowledge and experience of the workings of a law firm; in particular an understanding of Fee Earner activities and how these interact with a Finance system, but this not essential

Key competencies you will need:

• to be enthusiastic, positive and with ‘can do’ approach
• to have exceptional interpersonal skills
• to be driven to deliver continuous improvement
• a strong attention to detail whilst being able to see the ‘bigger picture’
• the attitude and ability to meet deadlines

Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks which will be carried out once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Shakespeare Martineau is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.