Departments Inlaw
Select one of our departments below for more information:
INLAW is the Benson Wood. specialist department for solicitors and barristers.
We want you to reap maximum rewards from building a successful practice. To help you achieve this, our services don’t just deal with compliance matters but are tailored to plan and manage the growth of your business and personal wealth.
Proven professionals
Benson Wood was established in 1971 and is now one of the leading accountancy firms in the North East.
In particular we are proud of the reputation and long term relationships we have built with our solicitor clients and contacts over the years.
Working alongside practices to meet their accounting and business needs has provided us with a wealth of experience. In turn, we have concentrated on adding value to our clients by helping them reach their financial goals through effective management and planning.
We have developed dedicated solicitor service teams who have a detailed working knowledge of the Solicitors’ Accounts Rules and a thorough understanding of the business needs of practicing solicitors.
Our solicitors’ services include:
- Specialist advisors to deal with all your compliance and ad-hoc requirements
- A highly developed detailed benchmarking programme, which provides you with invaluable performance indicators and statistics, which include not only national figures but also those of local firms.
- Experts in the requirements of the Solicitors’ Accounts Rules
- Being members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales specialist “Solicitors Group”
- Highly experienced tax professionals to deal with practice and personal taxation requirements
- The very latest tax and accounting software for compliance requirements and planning
- The reassurance of trained staff who are kept up-to-date with any changes that may affect your practice
- Forwarding knowledge gleaned from attendance at national annual “Solicitors Conferences”, attended by Law Society personnel.
Our INLAW team is led by Graham Thompson together with Amanda Cartwright, Rachel Robinson and Danielle Carolan.
We regularly receive calls from our solicitor clients who request assistance on a great variety of issues, ranging from their own Practice’s affairs to those of their clientele. From these contacts we are pleased to say that we have become accountants and business advisors to many of those clients and our solicitor clients have always appreciated this interaction.
Solicitors' account rules
If your practice holds clients’ monies then you must comply with the Solicitors’ Accounts Rules including the requirement to have your records audited and the submission of an Accountants’ Report to the Law Society.
Law Society Monitoring – The Law Society has recently expanded its monitoring units and all firms holding clients’ monies can now expect visits more frequently. It is therefore vital that your records are in order. Our auditing procedures are not simply tailored to produce an Accountants Report but also to provide assistance in ensuring your records are of the required standard.
Frequent Rule Changes – With frequent change to the Solicitors’ Accounts Rules, it is important for the partners of a practice not to worry about their client accounting system and to feel confident that their system and staff can adequately cope with the strict rules established by the Law Society.
Our commitment to training and specialist solicitor teams enables us to keep up-to-date with all such changes and assist your own staff in complying with these rules.
Management Letters and Rule Updates – In addition to the clients’ accounts audit leading to the Accountants’ Report, we provide comprehensive support to help improve the management systems of the firm. We hold seminars to advise our clients when new rules are introduced and provide comprehensive management letters following the completion of our audit and accounts work.
The management letters highlight breaches and recommend improvements to help you maintain best practice and reduce potential criticism from the Law Society inspectors.
Implementing best practice
Since the Law Society published its Practice Management Standards on best practice for member firms, there has been an increasing requirement for practices to focus on quality and management issues. This is in keeping with the Law Society’s aim to promote quality in practices, which in turn leads to improvements in client services and profitability. The key issues they highlighted are shown here:
Total Quality Procedures
- Management structure
- Services and forward planning
- Financial management
- Client care
- Managing people
- Office administration
Achieving best practice standards can be time-consuming and therefore expensive.
Having established our own practice through the development of quality initiatives we can help you avoid the pitfalls and streamline the process that leads to improvement.
Constructive Advice
Our role as advisor to assist practices to manage change, advise on a broad range of management issues and promote cultural change often required to achieve best practice
Improving Profitability
We have helped a number of firms improve their profitability. This has been achieved by building strong relationships at all levels of the practice and working to understand not just practice systems and processes but also values, motivations and ambitions. We can then draw on our substantial industry knowledge and experience to suggest realistic improvements that are in keeping with your goals.
In particular, we can assist in succession planning, practice development and the critical issue of cash flow planning and management, which all ensure the continued success of your practice.
Benchmarking
Through our benchmarking service we can give you an insight into the profession in which you operate. Our reports show key performance indicators, allowing you to compare your practice with others of a similar profile. As well as highlighting areas where improvement can be made, this identifies aspects of your practice that perform above expectation.
IT Development
From our understanding of solicitors’ IT requirements, we can offer advice and guidance on IT development.
Litigation Support
We can provide litigation support services, and have experience of providing expert reports. We can provide assistance with:
- Legal disputes
- Pre-litigation work
- Partnership disputes
- Matrimonial disputes
Financial Planning
Our financial services company gives clients access to independent financial planning advice. A financial plan can support business and personal goals. We can advise on:
- Income protection and critical illness cover
- Long-term care
- Retirement planning
- Investment advice
- Mortgages
Taxation
Benson Wood provides a high quality, cost effective taxation service developed through handling the affairs of professional partnerships, continual staff training, use of in-house taxation experts and the latest technology. We can meet the needs of your practice and its individual partners.
Effective Tax Planning
Our aims are to minimise tax exposure, develop an effective and flexible tax planning strategy and ease the burden of administration requirements. Optimum use of reliefs and forward payment planning will enable the practice to effectively manage each partner’s drawings requirements and, therefore, its own cash flow. We also consider retirement planning to enable succession in the practice.
Working Together
The practice’s taxation affairs will be coordinated by your relationship partner, with a taxation specialist handling each partner’s personal taxation. We never advise on one aspect of the practice in isolation. Before any advice is given, we will consider the taxation, commercial and practical implications for the business and make a recommendation that balances the needs of each area.
In addition, we shall keep you informed of tax exemptions and reliefs through our regular news services and provide specific advice whenever you are planning changes in the practice or in your personal circumstances
IHT Planning
We shall develop an overall tax planning strategy that will meet your specific needs and cover the short, medium and long term. Your plan will require regular review to cater for your own changing circumstances, such as the birth of children or grandchildren.
In developing your personal strategy, we shall consider the following:
- Ensuring you have a tax-effective will
- The use of all gift exemptions
- Equalisation of estates
- Lifetime transfers
- The use of trusts
- The application of business and agricultural property relief
- Funding of eventual inheritance tax liabilities
- Interaction with capital gains tax
- Gifts to charities
- The ownership of the matrimonial home
- Long-term care funding
Value added tax advice
When introduced in 1973,VAT was hailed as a simple tax but, in reality, it is far from that. As a tax on transactions its rules are particularly complex. Very often, its effects are not considered until it is too late or not discovered until an assessment for additional tax has been issued. The ease with which errors can be made makes the system appear all the more unforgiving.
Our own VAT specialists are available to provide advice not only on matters affecting your practice transactions, but also those of your clients where their expertise can augment your own in-house knowledge .
If you want more than compliance from your accountant, contact us now for your free initial consultation.
Graham Thompson FCA
Tel – 01642 607 047
E-mail – graham@bensonwood.co.uk
