Hi -- the experience in other countries where accounting firms have gone
into providing legal services is not that accountants become lawyers (it
is not quite like tax) but that they incorporate legal services provided
by lawyers inhouse. They thus can be "full service" -- like they already
provide many engineering, health related etc services inhouse. The
threat comes from the power of the firms -- they are enormous and
totally international. So, would you go to Shedd, Gunz and Herron, with
offices in Atlanta, Waterloo and Oxford, or the captive law firm of
Ernst and Young with offices virtually everywhere?

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, this is now common in
Europe and coming in in Canada and elsewhere. Aussies -- is it there
yet? In Canada the captive law firm still retains a separate name.

Sally

Lee Reed wrote:

> A couple of years ago, I ran down several articles on the movement
> of accountants into traditional legal fields, a movement possibly
> related to the current oversupply of accountants. I suspect that a
> search of the LEXIS/NEXIS news and legl news files would uncover
> these and other articles.  It certainly underscores the importance of
> law to CPAs and undercuts any move to reduce CPA exam coverage of
> law.
>
> I hope Ivan will discuss this movement with the AICPA.
> The ALSB should certainly not blindly take the ABA's perspective on
> things. The movement of accountants into traditional legal fields
> works to our advantage in a number of ways, both in teaching and
> research.