USA Lawyers Working with Accountants

[legaleagle]

Hello everyone:

I am a New York and New Jersey attorney looking to foster cooperation with accountants, especially those outside of my jurisdictions, with the goal of generating new sources of business for my practice.

Do you feel that there is a need or interest on the part of accountants to develop cooperation with lawyers? For instance, I envision that there are accountants that conduct investigations into fraud and misappropriation, provide management advice and counseling, and so on, and perhaps my legal support and judicial intervention would support such functions.

If so, what type of accountants would be particularly interested in building such relationships with lawyers?

Thanks for the insight!

 

[kirby]

"what type of accountants would be particularly interested in building such relationships with lawyers?"

Lonely accountants

 

[Daniel Russell]

I work with law firms to help provide assistance to their clients with forensic or valuation projects. In some instances, we perform expert witness engagements and testify in court. Other times, we will help draft memos for operating agreements, provide divorce settlement calculations, prepare valuations for estate purposes, etc. There are many ways that lawyers and CPAs can work together for the same clients, especially in family law or when dealing with closely held businesses.

 

[legaleagle]

Hello Daniel:

Thanks for your response. That's a fairly common arrangement that I have seen, where the accountant is adding valuable expertise to a project flowing from the law firm. But what about the opposite? Are there instances where accountants are seeking out lawyers to add value to a certain project or to provide legal support and judicial intervention for an accounting client? If so, under what circumstances?

 

[Daniel Russell]

I imagine lawyers could be helpful for accountants with regard to contracts type situations, or business filings, etc. For example, one of our clients is a contractor that has certain types of projects that have a greater risk of accidents, and/or workers getting injured. As a result, they split off those contracts to a separate business entity, established strictly for the purpose of shielding the main business from this higher risk work. Their lawyer has helped us to structure this arrangement, and is also involved in writing the wording of their contracts with customers, so that it specifically identifies the side business as the one performing the work, and not the main business. This type of work is not something that we could do on our own, and so we have reached out to their lawyer for assistance. Hope this example is helpful