ACTUALIZE SUCCESSFUL MONEY MANAGEMENT FOR ATTORNEYS – VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL

ACTUALIZE SUCESSFUL MONEY MANAGEMENT FOR ATTORNEYS – VIABLE SYSTEM MODEL

Attorneys have high rates of discipline events in mismanaging client funds. We will review how to create a comprehensive money management system that will allow you to always know how much money you have coming in and going out, and how to keep up with cash flow projections and emergency funds.

This training provides attorneys with an opportunity to assess and improve your professional money management skills.

Money is like air. Without it, you don’t last long. While many Attorneys have steady salaries and bonuses, there are many, many more who have intermittent income that is difficult to manage.

Some people seem to be naturally adept at managing their money, while others have never-ending struggles with paying the bills every month. This is why we will look at your personality style to better understand your natural tendencies towards managing money. Furthermore, we will discover your internal sub-personalities that keep you from becoming an excellent money manager. These saboteurs can become very powerful when dealing with a basic security need like money.

We will also review Phillip Campbell’s 10 rules of money management, to determine where you need to focus your efforts on improving your money manager skills. They are:

Never Run Out of CASH

CASH Makes the Rules

Know the CASH Balance Right Now

Do Today’s Work Today

Either You Do the Work or Have Someone Else Do It

Don’t Manage From The Bank Balance

Know What You Expect the CASH Balance to be Six Months From Now

CASH Flow Problems Can Be Seen In Advance

You Absolutely, Positively Must Have CASH Flow Projections

Eliminate Your CASH Flow Worries So You Are Free to Do What You Do Best – Grow Your Business and Make More Money

Don’t Practice on Borrowed Money

MONEY MANAGER TRAINING FOR ATTORNEYS

This training is designed to support attorneys in becoming powerful, inspiring and ethical managers of their money. Many attorneys do not know how to develop their money management skills and are ineffective financial planners. Attorneys will learn their core personality style and attendant strengths and weaknesses as money managers.

Unlike other professions, attorneys have critical financial, fiduciary and ethical duties. These burdensome competency requirements demand high levels of personal performance, year in and year out. Failure to properly perform any of these broad mandates can lead to complaints, public reprimands, suspension and debarment.

Money Managers observe and respond to the movement of money within your business. You must create your company’s financial value by documenting the cashflow. This requires managing accountants and bookkeepers and overseeing the payment of salaries, goods and services, and taxes. As a manager, you must create an information infrastructure that you can actually use, along with a culture of how best to interact with that infrastructure.

Money Managing It is a huge responsibility and takes a great deal of time, focus, and resources.

State bar associations across the country are advocating law firms to begin changing their company cultures to support lawyers in maintaining their wellness. As a Money Manager, your challenge is to create a money system that supports attorneys to stay in the flow of excellence every day. You also must be an inspiration to other attorneys and walk your talk. It is obvious that most attorneys cannot meet these challenges, and for this reason good Money Managers are extremely valuable. When compared to the general population, attorneys suffer from twice as many incidents of substance use disorders and mental health issues. Furthermore, increasing numbers of attorneys are being disciplined, sued and incarcerated for wrongdoing in their roles as lawyers. Much of this wrongdoing involves money, trust account funds, and breaches of fiduciary duties and duties of trust.

Law firms’ reputations suffer when they go broke and must overpromise, underdeliver, and take every case just to stay alive. Attorneys have a daunting task in complying with a wide range of mandatory duties, and to include these tasks in their “billable hours”:

• Competence (Model Rules 1.1)
  • A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client.
  • Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.
• Diligence (Model Rules 1.3)
  • A lawyer shall act with reasonable diligence and promptness in representing a client.
• Communication (Model Rules 1.4)
  • A lawyer shall obtain informed consent
  • A lawyer shall keep client reasonably informed.
  • A lawyer shall comply with reasonable requests for information.
• Conflict of Interest (Model Rules 1.7)
  • Representation must not be limited by a personal interest of the attorney
• Safekeeping Property (Model Rules 1.15)
  • Duty of trustee for client monies
• Declining or Terminating Representation (Model Rules 1.16)
  • When a lawyer’s health (mental or physical) interferes with their ability to practice effectively, they have an ethical duty to step down.
• Expediting Litigation (Model Rules 3.2)
  • A lawyer shall make reasonable efforts to expedite litigation
    consistent with the interests of the client
• Misconduct (Model Rules 8.4)
  • Lawyers cannot Commit a criminal act that reflects adversely on the honesty,
    trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer. This includes DUI and Illegal drug use or possession

Many attorneys avoid being Money Managers because of the extra demands and emotional drainage of being responsible for balance sheets, profits and loss, and cash flow projections. However, there is a systematic way to learn Money Management skills that, when mastered, make it easier to handle the responsibility. In order to have a long and truly successful career as a Money Manager  in law, you have to first understand yourself and any past trauma you may have endured regarding money. You have to know your strengths and weaknesses in dealing with money. You must understand your resistance to working openly with other professionals and talking about money with your staff. Without this critical data, you cannot master the fundamentals areas that are mandatory to becoming a successful Money Manager.

All attorneys have blind spots, so it is normal to feel frustrated and struggle in mastering these critical skills. It is painful, humiliating and inevitable to make mistakes as a Money Manager. What is worse is to keep making the same mistakes repeatedly and find yourself in a dire financial crisis month after month.

Research in the areas of neuroscience, psychology, organizational development and economics proves that learning the DISC personality system and understanding your sub personalities is necessary to learn your Money Management style, communicate your vision, create a healthy company culture, and manage conflict.

REQUIRED PRE-WORK (10 minutes)

We require you to take a DISC personality style assessment before this training. You can take a basic free test DISC assessment at 123 Test https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/

RECOMMENED READING (Audiobooks are available on Spotify):

Results-Oriented Financial Management: A Step-by-Step Guide to Law Firm Profitability, Third Edition John Iezzi

Emyth Revisited Michael Gerber

Never Run Out of Cash – Phillip Campbell

The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge

Die With Zero

Cashflow Game

SCHEDULE:

TIME	SUBJECT	PARTICIPANT TASKS
0:00 – 5:00	Overview of Program Outline –	Slides
5:00 – 10:00	Introduction and personal story of how we did our money in the family business.
10:00 – 15:00	The use of DISC personality style assessment in your money manager skill and development, review of assessment, take assessment – regular and work of leaders. Managing teams of accountants and bookkeepers with DISC. Positive Intelligence Saboteur assessment	Assessment Quiz #1 : Basic DISC DOC 1: Sample Free DISC assessment results – 123 Test DOC 2: Sample Paid DISC assessment results – WILEY DOC 3: Saboteur Assessment
15:00 – 45:00	Psychology of money management with Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge, 10 Cash Flow Rules of Never run out of cash, 7 Centers of Management Attention Money Management System,	Slides DOC 4: Operations Manual DOC 5: Business Plan DOC 6: Categories of spending and P&L
45:00 – 55:00	Cashflow Projections– audit by IRS – sale of business – owners equity and balance sheet	DOC 7: Sample Cash Flow Projection DOC 5: P&L DOC 6: Balance Sheet Assessment Quiz #3 – list of areas and competencies and challenges – satisfaction?
55:00 – 60:00	Die with Zero – personal financial goals and retirement strategies – Cashflow game  – Conclusion – further resources for manager training and development, course evaluation	DOC 7: Lifespan estimate DOC 8: Cashflow Game Assessment Quiz #2 Participant describes value and challenge of getting support to build financial planning systems and personal goals. Assessment Quiz #4 Course Evaluation DOC TO EMAIL TO PARTICIPANT AND EMAIL TO STATE BAR: Issue Certificate of Attendance

ABOUT ACTUALIS ATTORNEY WELLNESS AND MARK C. DALY:

Even before becoming an attorney in 1999, I learned how to develop my personal and professional skills by attending workshops, educating myself, getting peer support, and hiring professional coaches and therapists. I learned how to bring out the best in myself, my companies and the teams I supervised in my legal career. Over the past 20 years I have become a certified professional coach and a certified Shadow Work ® coach and facilitator. I am a Registered Non-Licensed Therapist in the State of Colorado with strict duties of confidentiality, which is very necessary when working with attorneys! I have taken courses in Voice Dialogue, Gottman Marriage Counseling and Emotionally Focused Therapy. I have used these skills to coach executives, managing and associate attorneys, as well as support staff, to become more satisfied and successful practicing law. Since 2004 I have been a registered CLE provider. I have coached and mentored dozens of attorneys in law office start up, practice management, and immigration law fundamentals. I have been an immigration attorney for 26 years. In the beginning, I struggled financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually. I have been married, divorced, and finally remarried in 2010. As a single dad dealing with a traumatic divorce, I know what it is like to mismanage a law office, break rules of competence and act unethically. Through it all, I have managed to learn from my mistakes and gain mastery in the 5 fundamental areas of attorney wellness – Leadership, Management, Finances, Mental Health and Physical Health. I twice started, built up, managed, and sold successful law practices in Nashville and Denver, and now I am financially free. I maintain excellent and loving relationships with my wife and grown children, and I have a great relationship with my extended family and even my ex-wife! In 2025, my wife and I went on a one-year sabbatical around the world to learn, grow, relax and enjoy life. I gained a better understanding of myself and decided to become an inactive attorney and launch Actualis Attorney Wellness. My primary aim is to help attorneys feel good, enjoy life, and do the right thing.