Specialist services
Accountants for UK solicitors and law firms
SRA Accounts Rules + accountant's report, LLP and partnership accounting, professional indemnity, partner tax, practice valuation. We work with solicitors only, on fixed monthly fees, with the senior accountant on your account answering your emails.
How we engage
Three engagement tiers
Most firms start on Essentials or Growth, depending on size and complexity. Specialist is bespoke for the harder transactions: sale, acquisition, post-merger.
Sole practitioners + small firms
Essentials
From £180/mo
Compliance floor for sole practitioners and 2-3 fee-earner firms. SRA Accountant's Report, statutory accounts, partnership/personal SA, basic tax planning.
- Statutory accounts + SA800 / personal SA
- SRA Accountant's Report (if applicable)
- Basic VAT returns
- Quarterly check-in
Mid-sized LLPs + multi-partner
Growth
From £450/mo
For LLPs and partnerships scaling fee-earner headcount. Monthly management accounts, partner-level tax planning, salaried-partner audit, COFA support.
- Everything in Essentials, plus:
- Monthly management accounts + KPI dashboard
- Salaried Member Rules quarterly audit
- COFA compliance support + breach review
- PII renewal timing + cost benchmarking
Practice sale + acquisition + complex
Specialist
Bespoke
Bespoke engagements: pre-sale planning, post-merger integration, ABS application support, complex partner structure design.
- Practice valuation + pre-sale planning
- BADR + Section 162 incorporation modelling
- Post-merger COLP/COFA transition
- Acquisition financial due diligence
- ABS application support
What we cover
Six service areas, all legal-sector specific
Regulatory
SRA Accounts Rules + accountant's report
We handle the SRA-mandated annual accountant's report, the five-weekly client account reconciliations, and the COFA support that keeps the report clean. The report is the floor. The work is making sure the firm's client account handling never gives the SRA a reason to ask.
- SRA Accountant's Report annually within 6 months of period end
- Five-weekly client account reconciliations
- COFA support and breach reporting
- Client money interest policy review
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Structure
Partnership + LLP accounting
LLPs and partnerships are tax-transparent: members pay personal tax on their share of profit. The work is the allocation methodology, the Salaried Member Rules (FA 2014) audit, and the partner-by-partner self-assessment. We do it cleanly.
- LLP accounts + SA800 partnership tax return
- Salaried Member Rules audit (Conditions A/B/C)
- Partner capital interest relief (ITA 2007 s.398)
- Profit allocation modelling for incoming/outgoing partners
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Tax
Tax planning for partners and fee-earners
Proactive across the tax year. We model partner drawings, retained earnings, capital contributions and pension contribution timing at current rates. For salaried partners we audit the FA 2014 conditions so you know exactly which side of the line you're on.
- Partner self-assessment and quarterly drawings reconciliation
- Spouse employment in the firm (defensibility audit)
- Personal pension contribution timing for partners
- Salaried partner FA 2014 audit
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Sale
Practice valuation + succession
Law firm valuation is multiples of normalised profit (1-3x for partnership/LLP, more for specialist firms) plus WIP and tangible assets. Pre-sale planning needs 18-24 months. BADR rate rises from 14% to 18% on 6 April 2026, which materially changes timing.
- Normalised profit + WIP modelling
- BADR pre-sale planning (timing the rate change)
- Section 162 incorporation relief for unincorporated firms
- Vendor financing structures + buyer-side due diligence
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Compliance
COFA + COLP compliance support
If you've just stepped into the COFA or COLP role, or you've taken over from someone who left in a hurry, we help you bed in the controls. SRA Accounts Rules in plain English, a five-weekly reconciliation rhythm that actually holds, and breach reporting templates.
- COFA onboarding for new appointments
- Reconciliation rhythm + evidence file setup
- Breach decision log + reporting templates
- AML supervision support and risk assessments
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Payroll
Law firm payroll + auto-enrolment
Trainees, paralegals, fee-earners, salaried partners. Each goes through PAYE under different employment-status reasoning. We run the payroll, manage the workplace pension, and audit the salaried-partner status quarterly so it never drifts.
- PAYE + RTI submissions
- Workplace pension auto-enrolment compliance
- Salaried partner FA 2014 quarterly check
- Trainee solicitor onboarding payroll
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Every engagement includes
Standard across all tiers
- ✓Direct line to the senior accountant working your file (no junior triage)
- ✓Same-day response on regulatory or SRA-deadline questions
- ✓Fixed monthly fees, no hourly billing on routine work
- ✓Quarterly partner / director review meeting included
- ✓SRA Accounts Rules in plain English, not regulatory speak
- ✓Five-weekly reconciliation rhythm support
- ✓Specialist legal-sector software fluency (Xero + Leap, Clio, ProClaim)
Frequently asked
- Do you only work with solicitors?
- Legal-sector work is our primary focus. Solicitors, LLPs, partnerships, sole practitioners, conveyancers, locum solicitors, COLPs and COFAs are the bulk of the book. Other professional-services firms occasionally, but we deliberately stay narrow enough to keep the sector knowledge deep.
- Can you complete our SRA Accountant's Report?
- Yes. We are independent of your firm and qualified to deliver the SRA-mandated annual Accountant's Report under the Accounts Rules. The report must be filed within six months of your firm's accounting period end. We work to that deadline as the backstop and aim to issue clean reports 4-6 weeks ahead so any issues are surfaced early.
- We are an LLP. Do you handle the SA800 partnership return?
- Yes, including the per-member allocation, the salaried-member FA 2014 audit, and each partner's personal self-assessment. We co-ordinate the LLP accounts filing at Companies House with the partnership tax return and personal returns so the picture is consistent across all three filings.
- What is the FA 2014 Salaried Member audit?
- The Finance Act 2014 introduced rules that deem a member of an LLP as an employee for tax purposes if all three conditions are met: Condition A — disguised salary is at least 80% of total reward; Condition B — limited rights to influence the LLP's affairs; Condition C — capital contribution less than 25% of disguised salary. If all three apply, PAYE runs on drawings. We audit quarterly because the position can drift as the firm grows.
- We are thinking about converting from partnership to LLP. Help?
- Yes. The conversion preserves the tax-transparent treatment but adds limited liability for members and a Companies House filing obligation. Most firms benefit; a minority don't (typically very small practices where the admin overhead outweighs the liability protection). We model the conversion economics, draft the partnership agreement updates required, and co-ordinate the Companies House process.
Talk to a legal-sector specialist
30-minute scoping call. We'll tell you which engagement tier fits, what the fee would be, and whether the change is worth making. No drip sequence, no follow-up chase.