Accounting For Law Students And Practitioners

Few professions are free of the need to understand accounting, least of all the legal profession. Legal accounting is a category all on its own, because attorneys are expected to keep trust accounts for most of their clients, deal with conveyancing and understand the issues around shared accounts -- whether at a corporate or domestic level. This book deals with the fundamentals of accounting, such as debits and credits and how income statements and balance sheets are created. The book also takes you through the transfer journal, bank reconciliations, VAT, correspondent accounts, accounting in conveyancing matters, legislation applying to attorneys' accounting and partners' capital accounts. Easy-to-understand examples clearly explain the principles involved.

This book is a new primary text for use in clinical, externship, legal writing, interviewing, negotiation, counseling, trial/appellate advocacy, and doctrinal courses. This text centers narrative theory as an effective way to teach law school courses and to practice the full range of lawyering skills. Using multimedia examples, as well as exercises drawn from actual lawyering situations, the book describes, explores, and analyzes the interrelationship between narrative and lawyering. The book addresses the broad spectrum of skills and practice areas and fora that the profession increasingly demands. The book contributes to the growing literature on professional identity formation with updated chapters on critical lawyering, anti-racism, and cultural humility, and expanded chapters on trial and other forms of oral advocacy. This is a comprehensive book for using narrative, stories, and storytelling to develop more fully and effectively as a lawyer. The book provides the theory and information for planning for, conducting, and reflecting on various lawyering activities. In addition, the authors make the teaching relatable and transferable to a variety of contexts by using concrete examples drawn from their own extensive practice, writing, and teaching using lawyering and narrative.

Written by two leading experts in this field, this text clarifies a subject that is often thought of as a mathematical jungle. The user-friendly format guides readers through complex concepts by enabling them to gain a thorough understanding of solicitors' accounts, from the basic accounting principles, processes and terminology, to the practical application of the Solicitors' Accounts Rules.

This book is both revolutionary and traditional, using primary materials rather than author narrative. By adopting this traditional approach for law and accounting, Cunningham's new book puts the subject on par with other law school courses. This traditional "cases and materials" approach underscores how accounting standards bear earmarks of functional law. To facilitate analogical and critical engagement on par with other law school teaching books, pedagogical design follows the classic casebook method of arranging cases and materials in pairs of opposites and complements. This arrangement enables conceptualizing accounting as functional law as theoretical and analytical matters as well. This original content also illuminates transaction economics, factors associated with accounting irregularities and the lawyer's role in financial reporting.

Many lawyers, especially those dealing with commercial matters, need to understand accounting yet feel on shaky ground in the area. This book is written specifically for them. It breaks down and makes clear basic concepts (such as the difference between profit and cash flow), the accounting profession and the legal and regulatory framework within which accounting operates. The relevant provisions of the Companies Act 1985 are discussed at some length. Holgate explains generally accepted accounting principles in the UK (GAAP), the trend towards global harmonisation and the role of international accounting standards. He then deals with specific areas such as group accounts, acquisitions, tax, leases, pensions, financial instruments, and realised profits, focusing in each case on those aspects that are likely to confront lawyers in their work. This book will appeal to the general practitioner as well as to lawyers working in corporate, commercial, and tax law.

Dozens of judicial opinions have held that shareholders own corporations, that directors are agents of shareholders, and even that directors are trustees of shareholders’ property. Yet, until now, it has never been proven. These doctrines rest on unsubstantiated assumptions. In this book the author performs a rigorous, systematic analysis of common law, contract law, property law, agency law, partnership law, trust law, and corporate statutory law using judicial rulings that prove shareholders do not own corporations, that there is no separation of ownership and control, directors are not agents of shareholders, and shareholders are not investors in corporations. Furthermore, the author proves the theory of the firm, which is founded on the separation of ownership and control and directors as agents of shareholders, promotes an agenda that wilfully ignores fundamental property law and agency law. However, since shareholders do not own the corporation, and directors are not agents of shareholders, the theory of the firm collapses. The book corrects decades of confusion and misguided research in corporate law and the economic theory of the firm and will allow readers to understand how property law, agency law, and economics contradict each other when applied to corporate law. It will appeal to researchers and upper-level and graduate students in economics, finance, accounting, law, and sociology, as well as attorneys and accountants.