Hypothetically speaking, what would terrify a financial planning analyst when not involved in the design of an AFA for an "undead" legal matter? Essentially EVERYTHING!
The terrifying fact is that AFAs constructed in a reactionary or non-specific methodology tend to yield disastrous results from a cost overrun or resource waste perspective on both the corporate legal department and law firm side.
Again hypothetically speaking, a fixed fee retainer for a specific matter is used to maintain legal services and advice, however what is the matter becomes undead due to lack of volume of work in the matter and no careful planning at the early stages of the AFA development. So the undead matter has a set cost per month for essentially not being alive. How did this happen? What caused the undead to rise?
On the corporate legal department side the anticipation of volume for the matter lifecycle was based on reactionary thinking to a legal concern and not vetted financially when entering into an AFA for a fixed fee retainer. Also the financial planning analyst manager was not aware of the requirements involved nor was the Legal PMO involved with planning for resources to interact on the matter. On the flip side the law firm did not adequately construct a baseline for the service work, resources were not assigned or over assigned and pricing out the AFA construct was agreed to with under/over value freefall; additionally because certain aspects of the scope of the work do not fall into the AFA agreement a peripheral matter with no AFA restrictions was required and therefore an additional cost on both sides. The result is cost over spend on undead work by the corporate legal department and floating or unused resources on the law firm side.
The wooden stake or silver bullet to end the undead matter is to simply close the matter. The terms of the AFA retainer always have the option to close the matter, however the undead simply wreaked havoc on budget and resources, as well as damaged internal as well as external relationships between client and law firm.
The sunlight on the undead is to simply not engage in an AFA in a reactionary manner and consider a matter lifecycle carefully with fully executable baseline parameters for resources involved, anticipated costs, and willingness to share collaborative value.