Ropes & Gray

About Ropes & Gray

Ropes & Gray is a preeminent, global law firm. The firm has been ranked in the top-three on The American Lawyer's prestigious "A-List" for seven years and is ranked #1 on Law.com International's "A-List" in the U.K.—rankings that honor the "Best of the Best" firms.

The firm has approximately 2,500 lawyers and professionals serving clients in major centers of business, finance, technology, and government in Boston, Chicago, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, D.C.

The firm has consistently been recognized for its leading practices in many areas, including asset management, private equity, M&A, finance, real estate, tax, antitrust, life sciences, health care, intellectual property, litigation & enforcement, privacy & cybersecurity, and business restructuring.

Ropes & Gray is an equal opportunity employer.

Overview

The firm currently prepares regular accruals reports, requested by our clients to monitor their legal spend. Accruals reports have historically been prepared by several different teams. This newly created Accruals team within Revenue will handle intake, identifying which reports go to Client Ops & LPM or Billing/Collections and which it will handle. For the latter, the Accruals team will handle workflow, communication, preparation and delivery of reports. 

Accruals reports are crucial to the client relationship because they provide transparency into our clients’ legal spend. They are an additional touch point with our clients. By preparing these reports accurately, efficiently and on time, we are showing clients that we are prioritizing an area that is important to them.

This position will report to the Revenue Project Manager.

Responsibilities

1. Handle intake and coordinate with Client Ops and Billing/Collections teams as necessary to assess and establish appropriate ownership.
2. Communicate, in a timely and effective manner, client accrual requests to members of Finance, Client Ops, BD and attorneys, and coordinate efforts to deliver on those requests.
3. Handle workflow, communication, preparation and delivery of accruals reports under the Accruals team’s responsibility established above.
4. Be able to pull, understand, analyze and report on information for accrual reports including: billed fees, unbilled fees, flow-through costs, A/R, current rejections, matter contact names (client and R&G), client IDs and other coding, matter budgets/forecasts, AFA or bill rate information, timekeeper detail or time entry narratives, or third party vendor spend.
5. Analyze high volume of unbilled time entries and categorize by legal or project workstream.
6. Ensure that regular deadlines are met to provide accruals reports on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, as well as specific dates required by clients.
7. Establish processes that include attorney sign-off on accruals as needed, and escalation if missing data.
8. Standardize accruals reports where possible - including leveraging technology (via BI and Financial Systems) to streamline data gathering and preparation.
9. Understand when there are multiple reporting requests from different audiences within the same client and coordinate efforts, ideally reducing the effort needed.
10. Interface with other business support teams to ensure all data is obtained and processes followed.

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in Accounting or Finance preferred
• At least 3 years of experience working in a law firm
• Must be responsive and show initiative
• Provide crisp communication with partners and clients (internal and external)
• Able to communicate in a friendly and professional manner
• Can effectively time manage and prioritize tasks based on a variety of factors
• Strong attention to detail
• Willing to ask questions
• Desire to seek out efficiencies in the use of technology

Comprehensive and Total Rewards Package

Ropes & Gray is proud to offer a comprehensive Total Rewards package to our business support team members. The firm also offers comprehensive health and well-being benefits, personal and professional development, career growth opportunities and a collegial and supportive culture. The anticipated pay range for this role is NY: $72,500 - $108,000 and BOS,CHI: $69,000 - $103,000, which represents our good faith and reasonable estimate of the starting salary range at the time of posting. In addition, this role is eligible for a discretionary bonus based on performance. The actual offered rate for this position will be determined based on job-related, non-discriminatory factors, including qualifications and experience, geographic location, education, external market data and consideration of internal equity. 

Working Conditions

This position requires hybrid on-site presence as an essential function of the role. Consistent and predictable on-site presence is required for ongoing business continuity, professional development and effective collaboration with colleagues and management.