MONEY MANAGER TRAINING FOR ATTORNEYS

This comprehensive financial planning 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. Attorneys learn how to create effective strategies to improve their vision, alignment and execution abilities. The course covers attorney duties of trust and loyalty in dealing with money, goal setting, money management systems for law firms, influencing team members to preserve and expand company resources, fee setting and case management. After your training, schedule your 30-minute Coaching Session to clarify your goals, identify your challenges in achieving your goals, and brainstorm strategies to overcome your challenges.

COURSE INCLUDES:

1. 2 Hour Video Instruction
2. 30-minute coaching session
3. Documents and Worksheets

SCHEDULE:

TIME	SUBJECT	PARTICIPANT TASKS
0:00 – 5:00	Overview of Program Outline – use this for webpage	Slides
3:00 – 10:00	Introduction and personal story of how money management training improved me as an attorney. Website stolen by Thompson West – IRS Audit
10:00 – 15:00	Overview of course logistics and topics – quizzes, short answer, certification, email support, chat support for tech issues? Take what works and leave the rest	Participant Lists Goals for Training
15:00 – 30:00	Big Picture Overview of Recursive Nature of Organization and Role of Money Manager Definition, Beers Model, Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge, Never run out of cash, 7 Centers of Management Attention, Results Oriented financial management Good/Powerful Money Managers give  Good/Powerful Feedback	Slides
30:00 – 40:00	Law Office Operations Manual money management tool – org chart, strategic objective, money	DOC 1: Operations Manual DOC 2: Business Plan
40:00 – 50:00	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	Assessment Quiz #1 : Basic DISC DOC 3: Sample Free DISC assessment results – 123 Test DOC 4: Sample Paid DISC assessment results – WILEY
50:00 – 60:00	Review of participant’s DISC personality style assessment and opposite personality style	Assessment Quiz #2: Participant describes 3 insights
60:00 – 65:00	5 MINUTE BREAK
65:00 – 105:00	Review of Step by Step Results Oriented Financial Management  – why you need to have these systems in place – audit by IRS – sale of business	DOC: 3 Summary of topics and checklist DOC 4: Sample Cash Flow Projection DOC 5: P&L DOC 6: Balance Sheet Assessment Quiz #3 – list of areas and competencies and challenges – satisfaction?
105:00 – 115:00	Die with Zero – personal financial goals and retirement strategies – Cashflow game	DOC 7: Lifespan estimate DOC 8: Cashflow Game Assessment Quiz #8 Participant describes value and challenge of getting support to build financial planning systems and personal goals.
115:00 – 125:00	Conclusion – further resources for manager training and development, course evaluation	Assessment Quiz #9 Course Evaluation DOC TO EMAIL TO PARTICIPANT AND EMAIL TO STATE BAR: Issue Certificate of Attendance

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 for law firms to begin changing their company cultures in order 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 have to 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 have to 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 Manageer  in the 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 over and over again, and find yourself in a dire financial crisis month after month.

Research in the areas of neuroscience, psychology, organizational development and economics prove that learning the DISC personality system is necessary to learn your Money Management style, communicate your vision, create a healthy company culture, and manage conflict. You also need to know your painful past, going back to your childhood, on how your family acted as Money Managers. Money is like air… if you don’t have any, it feels like you are dying. This course is designed to provide you an opportunity to do a deep dive into your money past, and create a new Money Management system that works for you and your personality.

REQUIRED PRE-WORK (10 minutes)

We require you 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

The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge

Die With Zero

Cashflow Game

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.