Listen Here, Mr. Attorney, Esquire

Part of our job as auditors is that we must receive legal confirmation letters from any attorneys involved in pending or threatened litigation affecting our audit clients. We must receive this letter before we can issue our opinion on the financial statements.

Usually this letter is sufficient. But due to blah blah, it’s been two months since we received said letters, and we need another update before we issue.

We don’t have the time to send out our request again and wait for the mail, so this means making phone calls. No, this means me making phone calls.

It’s pretty cool, though, kind of, because I’m calling to speak to these attorneys directly and the secretary can’t help me. They think they can at first, but it always ends in, “oh, I’ll put you right through.” How often do you get a direct line to an attorney? Normally they wouldn’t give you the time of day.

So I will admit there’s a little bit of a power trip in that. But, that’s not the point.

I talked to one attorney today who told me he couldn’t give out that information over the phone. (Keep in mind, we have a written request signed by the client saying that the attorney can speak to us about litigation, thus no breach the client-attorney privilege is happening). I say to the guy, “That’s interesting because I’ve talked to six other attorneys today and they’ve all spoken freely.”

“Oh, well, uh, our firm has 600 attorneys and there’s a good chance there were others who are working for this client. I’d need a formal request either by email or fax so I have time to corroborate any information.”

That’s fine. I PDF’d him a copy of the original letter we sent to him, as well as his original response, and told him to update it to reflect any changes. Two hours later, I had it. We’re good. Our partner can now go to the client’s board meeting tomorrow and tell them we’re good to go.

So that’s two days in a row where I haven’t let someone get away with b.s. (see previous post). In the past, I think I would have just gone along with it, but I knew this guy was just blowing smoke up my proverbial butt. Busted.