A Fractional CFO is an experienced financial executive who works with your firm on a part-time or project basis, giving you CFO-level financial leadership without the cost of a full-time hire. For law firms specifically, a Fractional CFO manages cash flow forecasting, financial reporting, partner distributions, billing system design, and trust account compliance — the financial infrastructure most firms lack but critically need.

Law firms have unique financial dynamics that general business consultants rarely understand — utilization rates, realization rates, trust accounting compliance, billable hour structures, and collections cycles. Wood Consulting Group works exclusively with professional service firms and law practices, meaning our frameworks, benchmarks, and systems are built around how law firms actually make and lose money.

The DECIDE™ Framework is Wood Consulting Group's proprietary methodology for law firm performance improvement. It works across six dimensions: Direction (aligning partners on strategy and compensation), Economics (understanding profitability by practice area), Capability (fixing gaps in finance, billing, and reporting infrastructure), Information (ensuring the systems of the organization support and data quality allow for key insights), Decision Discipline (installing a weekly KPI-driven leadership cadence), and Execution (making sure billing, collections, and operational improvements actually happen and stick).

Most firms identify immediate profit leaks and cash flow improvements within the first 14 days of engagement. Measurable operational changes — faster billing cycles, cleaner collections, real-time KPI visibility — typically take hold within 60 to 90 days. Longer-term structural improvements such as practice area profitability analysis, partner alignment, and enterprise value optimization develop over a 6 to 12 month engagement.

Engagement structures vary based on scope and firm size. Wood Consulting Group offers both fractional embedded engagements — where we operate as your ongoing Fractional CFO or COO — and project-based diagnostic engagements for firms that need a specific problem solved. The best starting point is a Law Firm Diagnostic conversation, where we assess your current situation using our proprietary framework for providing quick and whole organization improvement and recommend the right level of engagement for your firm's needs.

Clio is a leading legal practice management platform used by thousands of law firms. As a Clio Certified Consultant, Wood Consulting Group configures Clio to function as a performance engine — not just a case management tool. This means optimizing timekeeping, automating billing workflows, integrating collections, and connecting Clio data to KPI dashboards so firm leaders can see financial performance in real time. Firms that use Clio well collect faster and leak less revenue.

Wood Consulting Group works with law firms across New England, with offices in Maine New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. We primarily serve small to mid-size firms — typically 2 to 30 attorneys — where the managing partner is actively involved in operations and ready to make decisions based on data. We have worked with litigation firms, personal injury practices, and general practice firms seeking to improve profitability, operational control, and long-term enterprise value.