Protect Your Firm Against Liability Claims

New Guidebook Available on Society Website

By Wayne Whalen

CPAs and accounting firms can receive free online advice on how to protect their practices against liability claims by accessing the NYSSCPA Liability and Risk Management Guidebook, a new feature on the Society's website, www.nysscpa.org.

The guidebook contains three parts: insurance, risk management, and damage control. Part One discusses the liability insurance market, with chapters on buying insurance, underwriting considerations, specific coverage clauses, coverage disputes, and pertinent regulation.

Part Two offers advice on loss prevention techniques to supplement insurance coverage. Chapters provide risk management advice on client selection, document retention, practice acquisitions, personal asset protection, conflicts of interest, third-party fees and commissions, how to address various difficult situations, and other issues.

Part Three provides guidance on actions firms should take to minimize possible future exposure after a partner or staff member makes a mistake or a client threatens a claim. Among the chapters' subject matter is seeking outside advice, the importance of damage control, responding to claims, handling work papers, dealing with partners and employees, managing the press, using bad faith claims, responding to insurers' requests for information, and other topics.

"The guidebook represents the collected wisdom of practitioners who are experts in the field of liability," said Dan L. Goldwasser, an attorney with Vedder Price Kaufman Kammholz & Day and chair of the editorial board that wrote the guide. "It offers very good advice for CPAs and their firms against liability claims."

The editorial board includes CPAs, attorneys, and liability insurance specialists. In addition to Goldwasser, its members are Douglas Capuder of Capuder & Arnoff, Elliot Cohen of Parker Chapin Flattau & Klimp, Thomas R. Manisero of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, John O. McDonald of Herbert L. Jamison & Co. LLC, Walter Primoff of the NYSSCPA, Al Singer of Singer Nelson Charlmers, Richard L. Spinogatti of Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn, and Scott M. Univer of BDO Seidman.

To access the NYSSCPA Liability and Risk Management Guidebook, see the title bar on the home page of www.nysscpa.org. Members have the option of searching links in the table of contents (www.nysscpa.org/lrm/LRM_toc.htm) or following instructions to print or download the complete guide.