Senior Financial Analyst

Eleven Recruiting is seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Financial Analyst to join our esteemed law firm in Los Angeles. This role is pivotal in formulating pricing strategies and managing billing activity against client expectations in partnership with attorneys. The Senior Financial Analyst is responsible for creating budgets and forecasts, as well as responding to competitive requests for proposal. This position develops pricing tools and templates to boost accuracy in future budgeting and forecasting. It also develops financial analyses and critically reviews results in partnership with various levels of management within the firm.

Responsibilities:

Work closely with attorneys to respond to complex budget and pricing structure requests:

• Define scope and develop task-based budgets and forecasts.
• Assess and recommend alternate pricing proposals.
• Prepare risk and reward analyses and win analyses.
• Oversee all matter budget management for large clients and interact with clients.

Provide attorneys and other department heads with relevant data to help them manage client expectations on legal spend and with business development efforts:

• Create and publish budget to actual reports and packages.
• Create and optimize dashboards and ad-hoc reports as requested by attorneys and department heads.
• Provide customized modeling, performance and benchmarking analyses.

Define a pricing framework for specific litigation tasks or phases:

• Define, approach, analyze. and interpret comparable matter data and correct for anomalies.
• Test hypotheses, refine metrics, and increase the number of exemplars for future use.
• Determine causes of data quality problems and recommend improvements.
• Identify, troubleshoot, and resolve data quality issues and recommend improvements based on findings.

Others:

• Approve AFA related bills and billings' responses to client requests that might have more client or attorney sensitivities.
• Assist in documenting processes and participate in process improvement initiatives.
• Other projects/initiatives as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• Minimum 4 years of financial planning and analysis (FP&A) experience or related experience involving data analysis and substantial quantitative modeling and forecasting.
• Ability to communicate effectively with internal and external clients including attorneys, management, other staff, clients of the firm and, at times, vendors.
• Ability to effectively manage internal and external client expectations and build relationships.
• Ability to analyze current methods and processes, propose alternatives in a way that builds decision-making consensus.
• Ability to organize and prioritize multiple assignments, using judgment and initiative to accomplish results.
• Produce accurate work while meeting time-sensitive deadlines.
• Ability to work independently and lead projects from inception to delivery with minimal management oversight.
• Advanced skills in MS Excel, MS Access, SQL, Word and PowerPoint.
• Experience working with a financial or budgeting system.
• Prior law firm experience is helpful but not required.

Tools:

• VoIP, web and video applications.
• Software systems, particularly:
• MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, OneNote).
• SQL, SSRS, R, or Python.
• Iridium BI, Budget Manager, 3E, and dashboard tools.

Competencies:

• Teamwork and Cooperation: Treats others with respect; works well with others; asks for help when necessary; willing to share credit; avoids pointing fingers or assigning blame; volunteers to help others when available to do so; empathetic to others.
• Communication: Communicates clearly and appropriately with adequate frequency and tools; understands the need for regular, timely and high-quality communication; listens actively and asks appropriate questions; understands the message.
• Flexibility: Adapts to changing conditions; willing to do something new/different; open to change; accepting of differences.
• Problem Solving: Seeks solutions to problems; proposes creative and effective solutions to problems; examines underlying cause of problems when seeking a solution.
• Service Focus: Desires to help or serve those requesting service to meet their needs, responsive and available when needed, proactively anticipates needs and expectations and acts accordingly to support the success of the firm.
• Self-Development: Uses constructive feedback to improve; learns from mistakes; shows eagerness and capacity to learn; attends available training; shows interest in improving self; proactively looks for opportunities to gain experience in a range of responsibilities.
• Organization and Time Management: Orderly in approach to work; able to plan and execute work effectively and accurately; tracks and follows through on requests; maintains a well-organized and clean work area; prioritizes and understands urgency; able to be punctual and prepared; manages multiple tasks simultaneously.
• Composure: Understands what triggers emotions and uses that knowledge to maintain a professional presence.
• Analytical Thinking: Works systematically and logically to analyze information, identify causation and anticipate results. Investigates issues by drawing on own experience and knowledge and calls on other resources as necessary.
• Integrity: Deals with ethical issues appropriately; acts in a way that is consistent with firm values.