The anniversary of my first three months at FHM Forensic Accounting recently passed. It’s scary how quickly the time has flown by.

The lowlights include the feelings of panic and the sudden onset of imposter syndrome the night before my first day, taking two weeks to realise my laptop has a touchscreen and taking a similar amount of time to realise I was spelling the boss’s name incorrectly.

Fortunately, these lowlights have been more than compensated for by a number of triumphs. It’s been a very busy three months and although it has felt like a baptism of fire at times, it’s been a great opportunity to push myself and develop new skills.

One of my favourite cases that I have worked on involved acting as a shadow expert in a matrimonial case. This entailed reviewing another expert’s valuation report of several companies. We discovered various technical errors and implausible judgements in the expert’s report. When we restated the companies’ values based on our findings, it resulted in a valuation hundreds of thousands of pounds higher than that calculated by the assigned expert. This job opened my eyes to the importance of having a shadow expert and I like to think that our findings covered our very modest fee several times over.

Another memorable case involved a professional negligence claim. At first I thought the case was very straightforward and that the claimant company’s loss could simply be calculated by reference to its balance sheet assets. But after much to-ing and fro-ing with the expert appointed on behalf of the respondent, it became clear that the realisability of every balance sheet asset would be fiercely contested.  Therefore we would need to come up with strong arguments on behalf of our client. Sometimes the most demanding jobs are also the most rewarding.

In the past week we embarked on a roadshow of various law firms in the North East, which entailed rekindling existing connections and acquiring new professional contacts whom we look forward to working with in future.

On the whole, it has been a great learning experience and I am grateful to have the support of Fiona and the team in getting to grips with the diverse range of work we take on.

Getting in Touch

Fee estimates and CVs are readily available. Quotes can typically be provided within two working days.

Email: fiona@fhmforensic.co.uk
Telephone +44 (0)7770 642491