Graduate Finance Analyst

Join Us as a Graduate Financial Analyst at Shakespeare Martineau!

Are you an ambitious, creative and driven individual ready to kick-start your career?

Let us introduce ourselves…

It’s the people at Shakespeare Martineau that make us so special. By understanding what our people want, giving them the support they need, recognising everyone’s contribution and realising the unique power of teams, together we win. As a firm we are focused on proactively building and developing diverse teams, bringing different backgrounds, personalities and perspectives together. We play to our strengths, pushing ourselves to be consistently better than yesterday and deliver amazing solutions for our clients. We empower our teams with a high degree of individual responsibility; we self-manage and encourage everyone to be responsible for their own learning, knowing it makes us even better at what we do! We believe in trusting our people to make the right decisions for themselves, from when and where you work, to how you dress; we focus on outputs.

Meet the team

To provide truly outstanding client service we work as one team. Our Business Operations Group is made up of business professionals who work with our legal professionals to provide market leading expertise to our clients. The Groups include; Finance, Operations, HR, Clients & Markets, IT, Risk and the Executive Leadership team. Our Finance team is made up of over 40 people who work from a variety of our office locations. The team work closely with our other business operations teams to provide a first class service. They are responsible for the sound financial management of the firm, including cash flow, budgeting, internal and external reporting and audit. They have responsibilities for the safe-keeping and operating of our clients’ funds held on account and also deal with credit control, work-in progress and billing, accounts payable and expenses. The team also work closely with the Commercial Managers within each Business Unit to provide reporting and analysis along with finance business partnering support to all other areas of the business.

What you will be doing:

We are looking for a Graduate/Junior Finance Analyst to join our Commercial Finance team within the SHMA brand. You will provide dedicated support to the Commercial Managers and Head of Commercial Finance for SHMA. The role supports monthly close and reporting processes for SHMA, and is particularly focussed on improving process resilience and efficiency. The role also plays a key role in the forecasting and reforecasting cycles. Your insightful analysis will be a key part in reporting and improving performance within the legal teams.

Your key duties will be:

• Preparing and distributing Flash reports leading up to month end tracking the Firm’s fees against forecast.
• Lead the month-end close process by preparing and posting the team’s standard journals.
• Assisting with monthly commentary and variance analysis for team performance and identifying key trends, presenting findings back to the business.
• Support the monthly target-setting exercises, for Fees and Cash, by preparing the underlying MI.
• Prepare MI to support the Commercial Managers and business report and improve performance.
• Weekly time reporting, fortnightly chargeability analysis as well as other key metrics including Fees, Contribution, Trading ratios and Debt.
• Support the Commercial Managers with ad-hoc requests regarding individual performance or client profitability analysis.
• Support the Forecast and Reforecast cycles with preparation of historical MI, to facilitate reviews, and input into the planning and forecasting system.
• Manage inputs into the WIP model to support reliable forecasting.
• Support the consolidation of Team MI into a SHMA brand view.
• Support the maintenance of static data in core systems, including fee earner charge-out rates and target hours.
• Productionise more reusable solutions.

Key stakeholders will include the Commercial Managers and Head of Commercial Finance, and you will be expected to work with colleagues in other Commercial Finance teams as well as Central Finance. You will also have exposure to the Team Leads of Fee earning teams, Brand MD.

What you will need:

Skills and experience you will have:

• A part-qualified Accountancy qualification or working towards Accountancy qualification (or a degree in Finance and Accounting). Highly competent in Excel with the ability to handle large amounts of data; a working knowledge of Pivot Tables / Lookups, Index function is essential.
• Good spreadsheet management practice the ability to tailor reports to the end user and highlight and interpret key findings, turning data into information.
• Desirable: Working knowledge of using and running reports from TM1 Planning & Analytics, or similar Planning and Forecasting application.

Benefits, Agile Working and Additional information:

We embrace agile working and offer a blended approach to where and how we work. We appreciate that people have different needs and preferences and we’re keen to be flexible, after all, we value what you do, not where you do it.

We have the following hubs across the UK: Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, Lincoln, London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Solihull, Stratford upon Avon, Sheffield and in the South; Crawley, East Grinstead, Lewes, Brighton, Eastbourne, Seaford, Peacehaven, Storrington, Chichester & Southampton as well as our Scotland office located in Edinburgh.

Please be aware, for some vacancies, where we receive high numbers of applications, we may need to bring the close date forward. Due to the nature of the work undertaken, confirmation of employment will be subject to a variety of checks once an offer of employment is accepted. Details of the checks can be found here.

Equal opportunities

Ampa Group is a committed equal opportunities employer. We seek to attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures. We value and respect individuality and encourage a culture within our business where people can be themselves and be valued for their strengths and experiences. Everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, regardless of their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

About Ampa Group

Welcome to Ampa - a leading group of legal and professional services brands, home to leading legal services firms such Shakespeare Martineau, Lime Solicitors, Mayo Wynne Baxter, Marrons and others.

Our ‘House of Brands’, is where legal and professional service brands converge to unlock exciting opportunities for career advancement, collaboration, and comprehensive business services support across various disciplines including HR, IT, finance, and marketing.

Our overall purpose is to act as the cornerstone that facilitates the growth of every brand within our collective, empowering them with enhanced purchasing capabilities, access to specialised expertise, and a cohesive set of values and culture.

At our core, we are dedicated to creating an environment where each brand thrives through mutual growth and co-operation. Through our shared infrastructure and central support, we enable our brands to flourish, using the strength of our collective resources.

If you are passionate about driving positive change and immersing yourself in an inclusive, diverse, and supportive culture, then we invite you to join our team as we continue to unlock the potential in our people, clients, and investors.