*Dually-licensed Attorney-CPAs Offer Best Of Both Worlds
There are myriad options available when it comes to selecting the professionals you will utilize in your business and personal life, but the two most common are likely a CPA and an attorney.
Dually-licensed Attorney-CPAs offer a far more advanced and superior option than an expert in just a single field. The skillsets required for both of these specialists are unique; the attorney must be able to devise creative and persuasive solutions within the constraints of the law, whereas the CPA must be painstakingly organized with a meticulous attention to detail to avoid costly financial errors.
Although both professions require a different sort of mindset to achieve success in their respective fields, the qualities that make up a good attorney and a good CPA are remarkably complementary. For this reason, a dually-licensed Attorney-CPA can be an exceptionally powerful asset.
Practical Applications of Dual-qualification
Dually-qualified professionals will typically find a niche in one of their disciplines, meaning they will primarily practice in various areas of law or somewhere in the accounting field. Nevertheless, the additional training will likely impact their work in remarkably beneficial ways.
Consider the Attorney-CPA who primarily practices law. One of the most common witnesses used in trials are financial advisors. When your attorney is equally as trained in accountancy as a witness of the opposing party, they are much more qualified to cross-examine and refute their testimony.
This could potentially be the difference between winning and losing a case, since an attorney who is not trained in finance may have trouble understanding and countering their claims.
Now take the Attorney-CPA who primarily practices accounting. There is a good chance that a CPA will someday wind up being a witness in court because the job often entails auditing and preparing financial documents for businesses. However, many CPAs in this situation are unprepared for the litigation process and will be ill-equipped to present their facts and figures in a suitably persuasive manner that a judge or jury can understand.
Having the trial education and training of an attorney will ensure that if your business ever winds up on the wrong end of a lawsuit, your Attorney-CPA will be able to present the best case to help defend your interests.
And while these are two examples where dual licensing enhances the ability of your hired professional to perform their assignment, there are plenty of other situations where an Attorney-CPA is a superior option, including:
· Preparing tax documents if you are audited;
· Defending you before the IRS;
· Drafting estate planning documents;
· Serving as an expert witness for any sort of financial litigation;
· Representing you in divorce or drafting prenuptial agreements;
· Overseeing due diligence for merger and acquisition transactions; and
· Consulting or advising business development and operations.
In essence, any reason you may consider soliciting the services of an attorney or accountant will benefit by the hiring of a dually-licensed Attorney-CPA.
An Enhanced Perspective
While your typical attorney or CPA is trained to think a certain way through their focused education, a dually-licensed professional offers the advantage of a more comprehensive objectivity; they are able to view and solve problems with the ingenuity of an attorney combined with the resourcefulness of a CPA.
The integration of these skillsets can be incredibly valuable, as your Attorney-CPA can draw from experiences in both industries as they assist with your legal and financial requirements.
You can also feel confident in their motivation and diligence when it comes to meeting your needs due to the staggering amount of work and effort that goes into attaining accreditation in both of these technical fields — it requires a special person with significant drive to go through essentially double the education and certification testing necessary to achieve dual-accreditation.
This is something that a client clearly wants to see in the personality of a professional who will be trusted to handle serious and complex responsibilities that can have a substantial impact on their future.
When you are selecting a professional to protect you legally or financially, it is important to choose the most qualified individual. For this reason, dually-licensed Attorney-CPAs offer a far more advanced and superior option than an expert in just a single field.
Don’t get stuck with professional tunnel vision; consider the enhanced perspective of a dually-licensed Attorney-CPA.
*Quoted from Academy of Attorney-CPA's, www.attorney-cpa.com/benefits-of-hiring-an-attorney-cpa
