Senior Manager - Financial Planning and Analysis

Lathrop GPM•Chicago, KS

1d•$140,000 - $200,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Lathrop GPM, one of the nation's leading law firms, has an immediate opening for a Senior Manager - Financial Planning & Analysis in our Kansas City, MO, Dallas, TX, Minneapolis, MN or Chicago, IL location. The Senior Manager – FP&A leads the firm’s planning, forecasting, and performance analytics, with a mandate to turn data into action. This role designs and operates a proactive reporting cadence, governs data integrity across financial systems, and delivers business intelligence with real-time visibility to executives, practice leaders, and operations. The successful candidate combines rigorous analytical acumen with strong stakeholder management, ensuring that insights translate into measurable improvements in pricing, profitability, resourcing, and growth. Lathrop GPM is a full-service, Am Law 200 law firm with offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Overland Park, St. Cloud, St. Louis, San Jose, Redwood Shores and Washington, D.C. Our clients are at the heart of everything we do. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, and a professional, challenging, yet comfortable, hybrid working environment.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Accounting, Economics or related field; MBA or CPA preferred.
8–10+ years progressive FP&A experience, in a law firm setting and 3+ years of experience management experience
Demonstrated leadership of proactive reporting programs, modeling and forecast cycles.
Advanced Excel (modeling) and business intelligence software experience
Experience with ERP/financial systems (e.g., Elite 3E/Enterprise, Intapp, or comparable), and data tools
Strong command of scenario analysis, driver based modeling, and profitability frameworks.
Data integrity champion: meticulous validation and reconciliation.
Storytelling with data: ability to distill complexity into clear, compelling recommendations.
Bias for action: converts insights into prioritized initiatives with measurable impact.
Stakeholder influence: earns trust with partners, practice leaders, and executives.
Change leadership: designs repeatable processes and improves adoption of analytics.

Responsibilities

Own a predictable reporting rhythm (weekly/monthly/quarterly) covering revenue, margin, utilization, rate realization, pricing and client/matter profitability.
Publish early warning dashboards and variance bridges (actual vs. budget/forecast) with root cause analysis and recommended actions.
Drive rolling 12–18 month forecasts; scenario and sensitivity modeling for economic, rate, and volume changes.
Deliver KPIs, narratives and visualizations
Manage data models data that standardize metrics across finance and operations.
Build self service analytics for practice leads and managers; create certified datasets, measures, and report templates.
Automate recurrent reporting (scheduling, alerting) to reduce cycle times and manual touchpoints.
Establish and enforce data quality standards: definitions, validation rules, reconciliation routines
Partner with Technology Services to maintain secure data pipelines, access controls, and audit trails.
Lead periodic data quality reviews (rates, arrangements, timekeeping, client/matter attributes) and remediations.
Manage the annual budgeting process and quarterly reforecasts; set calendars, templates, assumptions, and milestones.
Serve as the finance liaison to practice groups and administrative leaders; translate insight into action plans.
Lead cross functional projects with defined outcomes and timelines.
Manage and mentor FP&A analysts; set goals, review performance, and modeling/ capability.
Establish standards of work for models, decks, and dashboards to ensure consistency, accuracy, and readability.
Other duties as assigned.