When a court counts a professional’s income as an asset …
After more than 20 years of marriage, a lawyer and his wife divorced. The wife hired a CPA expert, who testified that the husband’s practice had no real assets but a bank account with nearly $120,000—and that was the value of the enterprise, he said. The court found that the husband earned approximately $270,000 per [...]
Does your law firm have any value? These lawyers argue it doesn’t.
Dixon v. Crawford, McGilliard, Peterson & Yelish, 2011 WL 4348058 (Wash. App. Div. 1)(Sept. 19, 2011) One of the five founding partners of a well-established, thirty-year old public defense firm left in 2006, taking all of his civil defense clients with him. Two years later, a junior (non-equity) partner left the firm, and sued for [...]
Law firm valuation provides ‘peculiar’ problems
“Lawyers never quite want to resolve buy-sell agreements because they want to keep their options open,” according to Ron Seigneur (Seigneur Gustafson) in his Law Firm Valuation Checklist, appearing in the most recent (July 2011) BVUpdate. Law firms are also in a state of transition and their partners are used to litigation, Seigneur pointed out, [...]
Because your partners and associates leave, law firms are worth less than you’d like
One of the biggest risk items is the increasing free agency attitude of any partner with a book of business, says Ron Seigneur. “Firms are overpaying for the talent, and in some cases taking extra lawyers they don’t even want to get the deal done,” he says. His co-presenter on today’s “Valuing Law Firms” webinar [...]
Practice management: 3/4ths of law firms report per partner earnings growth in 2010
“Overall economic performance is rebounding,” says Altman Weil Law Firms in Transition Survey 2011, “with two-thirds of all firms surveyed reporting increases in gross revenue in 2010 and nearly three quarters reporting increases in revenue per lawyer and profits per equity partner.” The number-one trend identified: “94% of law firms believe that the focus on practice [...]
What’s your law firm worth? Two leaders discuss how to set a price for your practice
Join valuation expert Ron Seigneur (Seigneur Gustafson) and consulting guru Pete Peterson (Maxfield Peterson PC) on Wednesday 6/29 at 1 p.m. ET for a 100-minute webinar dedicated to the ins and outs of valuing law practices. In addition to Seigneur’s past position as CFO of a 50-attorney firm, this panel has consulted with several hundred [...]
Divorce court limits personal goodwill value to non-compete
In the third case in as many months to decide the value of a dental practice in divorce (see BVWire # 96-2 and BVWire #96-4), the Ohio Court of Appeals just considered the effect of the sale of the practice during the proceedings. For reasons the court does not detail, the husband sold his solo [...]
Value of a law firm is controlled by “standard of value”
Hartley v. Hartley, 2010 WL 2071444 (Ala. Civ. App.)(May 21, 2010) Lawyers and their financial experts face particular discovery challenges when the business in a divorce case is a law firm. Restrictive buy-sell poses a barrier, too. In this case, the wife subpoenaed the husband’s law firm for all personnel and payroll records, retirement plans [...]
Ten Steps to Value Law Firm Contingency Cases
Weinberg v. Dickson-Weinberg, 2009 WL 3294784 (Hawai’i App.)(Oct. 14, 2009) On her appeal of the divorce from her lawyer husband in Hawai’i, a wife asked two questions, which have important implications for other state jurisdictions: Has the majority rule on the disposition of goodwill in divorce resulted in “gross under-valuations of countless successful businesses” simply [...]
Court values law firm goodwill (and their contingency cases)
Weinberg v. Dickson-Weinberg, 2009 WL 3294784 (Hawai’I App.)(Oct. 14, 2009) Has the majority rule on the disposition of goodwill in divorce resulted in “gross under-valuations of countless successful businesses” simply because their “fortunate owners” happened to be professionals? Does the majority rule properly hold that a law firm professional’s pending contingency-fee cases are marital property [...]
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