Big Four Accounting's New Challenge To Law Firms

The big four accounting firms have a number of advantages in competition with major law firms internationally, among them significantly larger war chests, and the accounting firms have made it clear they intend to exploit those advantages and continue to make inroads into the legal market, writes Mark A. Cohen in his Legal Mosaic blog. “The BigFour already have robust ‘legal consulting practices’ in the U.S. even if they do not deliver those ‘legal’ services in the guise of a law firm,” he says. He predicts there will be “a virtually seamless transition for the BigFour into the full-blown practice of law once U.S. regulators wake up to realize that the rest of the world’s legal market is moving in another direction.”