Professional Liability Advocate

We have assisted many accounting firms in the creation or revision of their client engagement letters. They very often question the need to include certain provisions intended to limit their liability to their clients and sometimes ask whether the provision is even enforceable. Whether the provision will be enforced is uncertain due to the very limited case law addressing liability-limiting provisions in accountants’ client engagement letters, and there could be variations in enforcement from state to state. Nevertheless, we regularly advise our clients to include the provisions, even if enforcement is uncertain, because the provision might just be accepted and never challenged, thereby serving its purpose, even if a court strikes it down after a legal challenge.

In the most recent “North America Top Technology Initiatives Survey Results,” CPAs responding to the poll ranked “securing the IT environment” as the number-one priority, followed by “managing and retaining data,” “ensuring privacy,” “managing IT risks and compliance,” and “preventing and responding to computer fraud.” The top five poll results all relate to securing, managing or protecting the information entrusted to CPAs. The poll results are largely consistent with prior years and not particularly surprising in a world where data breaches routinely make national headlines, and CPAs receive and store large amounts of highly personal and confidential data. What is surprising and potentially alarming is the seemingly low levels of confidence the poll respondents had in their ability to protect data.

Accounting firms often use post-employment restrictive covenants to prevent their clients and employees from being poached by departing partners and employees. As the number of accountants moving between firms has started to pick up again, so too has the number of disputes concerning the enforceability of the restrictive covenants those accountants signed at their former firms.

In a recent Wilson Elser Client Alert, “A Trap for the Unwary Advertiser ,” Tom Manisero (Partner-White Plains) discusses a practice that can trip up accountants looking to use their current client list as a starting point for their advertising. While your clients undoubtedly can be fertile ground for expanding your practice, you have to be careful not to violate the Treasury Regulations implemented in connection with IRC § 7216, which protects confidential information obtained from 1040 clients.

Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the SEC was “bringin’ sexy back” to accounting investigations. That’s probably not good news for those auditing public companies.

In 2002, “accounting scandals” became a household phrase as the accounting frauds at Enron, WorldCom and others came to light. Although accounting fraud was nothing new, the public and political reactions to these scandals led to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the formation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), as well as a significant increase in the number of SEC investigations.