FORENSIC CPA
A Forensic Road Warrior Walker & Company CPA, provides forensic accounting and litigation support services to attorneys working in the family law area.This publication is intended to be informative and educational. It does not replace the services of a competent professional which should be sought before relying on this information.
Volume 2, Issue 1May 15, 1998
As a forensic CPA, I have found a great benefit in having a laptop computer, e-mail and a web page. In this article I will share with you these benefits. This may give you some ideas of how to apply the same to your family law practice.
As you are aware, family law is not a practice that can be done solely at your office. There are settlement conferences at various locations, bench bar hearings and possibly, even trial. As a forensic CPA, I do numerous jobs in the context of divorce. This may include direct tracing spreadsheets, schedules of net disposable income, support calculations, lifestyle analyses, stock option valuations, and business valuations, to name the more common items.
Having my work on a laptop at a settlement conference or bench bar hearing provides the means to quickly make changes or run alternatives that the parties can then review and possibly reach an agreement at that same meeting. I feel I am truly providing litigation support when I can assist the attorneys in reaching an agreement.
When I attend conferences and trials I also take along my portable HP laser battery operated color printer. It is small, lightweight and you do not even need cable hookups to your laptop. It is all done by infrared laser beams. I think I might have paid around $250 for this printer at one of the large discount office suppliers.
Software
I have all of the standard software that you already probably have at your office. I have word processing, spreadsheet and support calculation software. However, for my family law library I use Attorneys Briefcase which is fully loaded on my laptop. Not only do I have the code of the law and the authors’ interpretation, but I also have the full text on appellate court cases. Recently, I attended a bench bar hearing with an attorney I was working for. The panel recited a specific case, which my attorney was not familiar with. During a break, I was able to quickly print out the case for the attorney to review.
Keeping current on case law is very simple. A free service of Attorneys Briefcase is to provide summary updates on all recent court cases dealing in family law. These updates are sent weekly to me via e-mail. If I want to review the full text I can use my modem and download the case to my computer and print it out.
E-mail is at the earlier stages of what fax machines went through. Many people first thought they did not need a fax machine. In a very short time, most realized that an office could not operate without one. E-mail will be just the same. Already, we are able to do things we could never have done with a fax machine. This last year, I was involved in a direct tracing assignment. This was further complicated by the fact that the client had moved to Texas. We overcame the problem by teaching the client how to use a spreadsheet. By e-mail, we were able to transfer large spreadsheet files back and forth instantly. We could review and make changes and print out the final copy for the courts. This could never have been accomplished without the Internet.
Occasionally we prepare large declarations for attorneys. Now we can e-mail the word processor file directly to the attorney who can make the final corrections and print out an original copy. The days of retyping are over.
Unlike a fax machine, there are no long distance telephone charges. E-mail is here to stay.
Web Pages
I really was not planning on having a web page. The major source of my work comes through the attorneys I work for. However, when you subscribe to an Internet provider for e-mail, most give you free space for a web page. Being a true bean counter, I could not turn down something for free, so I sat down one day and developed and posted my own web page. It is nothing fancy, and I did it all myself. I use my web page as a free color brochure. Most of the clients we are involved with have access to the Internet either at their home or office. In this way, I can provide anyone interested in our services with a color brochure that costs me nothing. I do not even need to mail it to them.
We have all read or heard about the wealth of information that is available on the Internet. It is true and most of this information is free. Part of our web page has a section on related links. This related section benefits not only the public, but our own staff as well. As we come across links that we can use in our practice, we add them to the web page. In this way, we are developing our own Intranet for our firm members’ use.
These are some of the things we are doing with computers, e-mail and our web page. I can assure you that our firm and staff have now found the Internet to be an important and necessary tool.
Copyright © 1998 Walker & Company Click here to go back