The 2011 Top 25 Consultants: Jim Roth

In fact, a month or so after the restating, Roth says Huron had 70 new clients. Many of the premonitions about what was going to happen to Huron were wrong. "They were wrong because we had before our restatement, and we have today, a group of people in our company that are incredibly proficient at what they do and they are incredibly client focused," Roth says. "I couldn't have been prouder with the way our people responded to this whole thing and that's why we are as strong as we are today."

And make no mistake—Huron is getting stronger. Its first-quarter revenue increased 11.9 percent to $143 million and the firm affirmed its full year 2011 revenue guidance in a range of $580 million to $620 million, which would be up from $553 million in 2010.

To help jump start the business, Roth and his team realigned the business to focus on its four core strengths—Healthcare, Education, Legal and Financial Services. "We've narrowed our focus and we're very strong because of it," Roth says. "We didn't make any drastic changes, but we did decide, for instance, that health and education—areas where we were already strong—were going to go through very drastic changes over the next three to five years, plus we already had a strong market presence in those areas."

Roth says about 65 percent of Huron's work is in those two segments, with legal accounting for another 25 percent.

"We started the company nine years ago with a whole group of practices," Roth says. "When I took over the company, we were able to take a fresh look at the business and decide which ones had the best futures ahead of them," Roth says.

—J.K.