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Keep Your Friends Close But Your Auditors Closer: Corporations Risk Waiver When Independent Auditors Request Work Product, Daniel Reach

Daniel Reach

In the current transparency-driven regulatory environment, corporations’ efforts at compliance are rife with uncertainty. The work product doctrine is a core safeguard of a lawyer’s work, which may contain sensitive information that corporations would not want disclosed to opposing parties. Meanwhile, independent auditors serve in a perilous capacity as they provide necessary services to their corporate clients while risking potentially adverse exposure of the information these clients and their counsel disclose to them. The work product doctrine is a time-honored and rule-driven protection that guards the mental impressions and work efforts of lawyers from discovery by opposing parties. Public accounting …