Vice President Finance Accounting

About Kounsel
Kounsel is defining the Managed Practice Operations category for the $120 billion solo law market. Solo attorneys spend most of their working hours on operations — books, billing, intake, scheduling, trust accounting, document generation, vendor management — that has nothing to do with the legal expertise their clients are paying for. We take all of that off their plate. The attorney does law. We do everything else.
We're a startup with conviction and momentum: a founding-cohort attorney on the platform, a working product, and a clear path to defining a category that hasn't been claimed yet.
The Role
Remote, reports directly to the founder.
You are the CFO of every Kounsel attorney's practice. Kounsel runs the operational back-end of solo legal practices so the attorney can focus only on legal work. You're the person who makes sure each attorney's financial house is in order — books reconciled, bills paid on time, cash flow visible, decisions informed by real numbers.
You'll serve multiple attorneys from day one. This is a coach/player role: you're hands-on with the work today, building the playbook and the systems that future hires under you will execute against tomorrow. As Kounsel grows, you lead the function and do less of the manual work yourself.
What You Will Own
Each attorney's financial house. For every attorney on the platform, you are their CFO:
Books reconciled and current — accurate categorization, monthly reconciliation, no aged exceptions, accounts payable kept on cadence, vendors paid on time
Trust accounts reconciled per the attorney's state rules
Payroll reconciled monthly against the payroll provider; books reflect each pay run
Cash flow visible and forward-looking — runway, AR/AP aging, payroll obligations, shortfalls flagged before they bite
Decision support and advisory — when the attorney is weighing a hire, a rate change, a new lease, equipment, or any other financial decision, you have the data and the judgment to advise
Proactive attorney communication — monthly check-in, quarterly financial review, no surprises
Year-end tax handoff — clean packet delivered to the attorney's tax CPA so their fees go down and their filings are accurate
Sale and audit ready. A Kounsel attorney should be able to enter a sale process, audit, or financing conversation without scrambling — because you've already built the source documents and kept them current:
Clean, normalized P&L by year and by month, ready to defend in diligence
Owner add-back schedules built and supported with documentation
Normalized cash flow statements
Supporting schedules behind every material line item
Operating expense documentation — vendor contracts, recurring costs, capitalized-vs-expensed decisions
Sale-ready data room maintained continuously, not assembled in panic
When an attorney decides to sell, retire, bring in a partner, or seek financing, you're handing over a binder — not starting from messy QuickBooks
Improvement engine. The third hat: making your own role more leveraged over time.
Platform improvements — when you see yourself doing the same exception triage three times, you file a spec with engineering for automating it. You're the source of the books-health roadmap.
Attorney-side improvements — when you see categorization patterns, cash flow habits, vendor relationships, or operational choices that the attorney could change to add value to their business, you raise them. You're advising, not just bookkeeping.
Playbook building — every recurring decision type, every escalation pattern, every "if-then" rule becomes a documented SOP so the next finance hire can execute against it.
Who We Are Looking For
Required:
CPA license — active and in good standing
7+ years in accounting and finance roles, with at least 3 in a controllership, CFO, or function-building capacity
AI-literate — you've used AI tools in your work to deliver something genuinely useful (not just experimentation) and can walk us through what you built, how you set it up, and what changed because of it
QuickBooks Online or other leading small business accounting software — daily-driver level. Deep comfort with categorization, reconciliation, and reporting workflows
Technology-forward orientation — you don't just use accounting software, you think about how to optimize and extend it. You're comfortable with API-driven workflows and can talk to engineers about integration patterns without translation
Optimization mindset — when you see repetitive work, your instinct is "how do I automate this," not "I'll do it faster next time"
Independent operator — async-first, comfortable advising attorneys directly without hand-holding
Strong written communication
Preferred:
Offshore/Outsourced Team Management: Proven experience recruiting, training, and managing offshore accounting teams or outsourced back-office resources to drive operational leverage.
Ramp experience (or comparable modern expense-management platforms)
Legal industry exposure — you've kept books for lawyers before, or worked in a professional-services finance role
Trust accounting (IOLTA) experience — useful but trainable
Practice management software familiarity — useful context for talking with attorneys about how their billing flows
Fractional CFO experience — you've served multiple small-business clients in parallel before
Compensation
The structure:
Equity-forward to start. This is a real equity opportunity.
Cash compensation ramps as Kounsel adds attorney clients. As the book of business grows, your cash comp grows with it.
Target market-rate base salary at full scale. We've budgeted for the role to be paid at market when revenue supports it.
Incremental income opportunity. Beyond the core retainer scope, individual tax-preparation engagements and probate tax filings for attorney clients are available as additional paid engagements. You can grow your earnings here.

Work arrangement
Yes