I don't hold SGH shares, so I have never read its financial reports and do not know how it accounts for revenue.
But if I was asked to take guess, I would say that, as a plaintiff law firm, it would recognise revenue whenever it has settled a legal claim and has signed the relevant legal instrument that gives effect to the settlement. The legal instrument will be either a deed of release and/or a consent judgment which is then filed in court and disposes of the legal proceedings. Both instruments would provide for a date by which payment of the settlement sum and SGH's costs are required to be paid. The counterparty, i.e. the defendant to the claim, would normally ultimately be an insurer or a large corporation, so the prospect of SGH not ultimately getting its legal costs is negligible. However, it would be a fairly common occurrence for the payment date to come and go and for SGH (and its client) to be still waiting for the cash to be deposited into their accounts.
The other way that SGH would recognise revenue is whenever court proceedings have proceeded to judgment and judgment has been handed down in favour of SGH's client along with costs.
In both cases, the costs that SGH bills its client for and the costs that it ultimately receives from the insurer/defendant (which become SGH's cash receipts) will almost never be the same. This is because, once a claim has been settled or has gone to judgment and SGH's client has been awarded damages plus legal costs, the costs that SGH has actually billed will then be the subject of further argy-bargy between SGH and the insurer/defendant. If they can't agree on the amount of costs which are to be recovered, the dispute will proceed to costs assessment. Costs assessors generally strip out the fat from lawyers' billed fees, so that most plaintiff lawyers try to avoid the process if they can.
The net result of all this is that the gap between SGH's billed costs and the costs that it ultimately receives as cash receipts can suffer a considerable time lag and can be quite uncertain during that time. Further, because SGH operates on a no-win/no-fee basis, its clients are not required to make up the balance between SGH's billed costs and the costs that it ultimately receives as revenue.
I say all this because I can well see how the revenue recognition of any law practice is open to abuse unless the dominant mindset of the firm is one of conservatism in recognising revenue. If SGH recognised revenue at the settlement or judgment stage, that could potentially result in a large discrepancy when SGH's legal costs were ultimately paid.