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KPMG US aims to become a law firm too

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KPMG US has set up a subsidiary that has filed an application in Arizona to establish a law firm in the state, with hopes of going national.

The subsidiary of the New York-based Big Four firm, known as KPMG Law US, filed an application with the Arizona Supreme Court to establish KPMG Law US as an “alternative business structure.” KPMG Law US will provide a set of integrated business solutions for legal teams, adding to the global capabilities of KPMG Law.  

KPMG member firms around the world have been offering legal services for over a decade and are now in over 80 jurisdictions. In fiscal year 2024, the fastest-growing function across the KPMG global network was tax and legal services.

“KPMG Law US will be positioned to deliver innovative and quality services for legal teams, drawing on the KPMG network’s global experience as well as our technology capabilities and scale,” said a KPMG US spokesperson. “Legal teams navigate complex challenges with the support of traditional law firms. They also face substantial and wide-ranging process challenges that can benefit from legal expertise and technology at scale. We aim to solve those pain points, especially on tight timelines.This focused effort is a natural extension of our capabilities and will complement the services of traditional law firms.”

KPMG US already serves over 100 clients in Arizona, leveraging approximately 300 people across the firm’s audit, tax, advisory and business process group teams. Its presence has grown 35% since 2020 and supports the growth of the Arizona economy. 

KPMG would be the first Big Four firm in the U.S. to operate a law firm, according to the Wall Street Journal. It’s leveraging a state program that began in 2021 ending a restriction on allowing non-lawyers to own law firms in an effort to alleviate the shortage of legal service providers. 

“We have been studying Arizona’s structure for years, and we’re excited by the possibility that it presents to us,” said KPMG Tax principal Tom Greenaway, the designated principal on the application, during a January 14 court hearing. “We think the time is right now for us, given the advances that we have made in technology and the maturity of this market. We really think that we can bring innovation and a complete set of integrated legal solutions to our clients and to other clients here in Arizona.” 

The firm aims to grow the law firm beyond Arizona once it has received approval from the state supreme court and expand to other parts of the country by leveraging Arizona’s laws and its alternative business structure, 

“As an Arizona ABS, KPMG Law US would be able to practice law in the United States, subject to legal rules in its various jurisdictions, which is something that no Big Four network firm can currently do,” said the spokesperson. “Pending approval, this innovation would differentiate KPMG Law US both in the legal and the consulting markets. KPMG Law US would be able to bring legal capabilities to managed services, such as contract lifecycle management, among others.”

Partnering with firms in other states, KPMG Law US plans to serve clients nationally, including in Arizona. It has established relationships with law firms to support its legal teams. KPMG Law US intends to operate within each state’s ethics rules just like every other law firm. It will be able to co-counsel, refer or partner with separate staffing firms and other law firms, to expand services across jurisdictions, subject in all cases to legal and ethics rules in its various jurisdictions. KPMG pointed out that other ABS law firms operate this way and the model is also consistent with common practice among law firms. For decades, it noted, U.S. law firms, both small and large, have used co-counsel arrangements and staffing companies to provide coverage for their work across different jurisdictions.

“In order to do this job effectively, I need to be embedded within and working shoulder to shoulder proactively with the business,” said KPMG principal David Rizzo, a compliance lawyer for the ABS application, during the court hearing. “We are committed to running a tight ship and to standing on the right side of the law in Arizona, and in all other jurisdictions, backed by the support and resources of KPMG LLP.”

The firm plans to abide by all of the ethics rules surrounding such arrangements. “We will strive to set the bar for quality and ethics in legal services,” said the spokesperson. “KPMG Law US will be governed by the same high ethical standards that apply to other law firms and will build on our long-standing commitment to quality, ethics, independence and compliance with professional standards. We look forward to enhancing our multidisciplinary model and driving further innovation in the professional services industry, pending approval.”   

KPMG Law US plans to offer legal managed services, global entity management, outbound legal project management support, and legal transformation solutions to legal teams. KPMG Law US will mainly deliver large-scale, process-driven work, such as volume contracting, remediation exercises, M&A-driven harmonization of contracts, and other legal managed services, leveraging its technology. KPMG has a cloud-based and generative AI-enabled Digital Gateway platform that serves as a “control tower” for a company’s set of tax and legal data, providing advanced analytics and reporting capabilities.

“Technology and process are something that we’re really good at,” said Greenaway at the hearing. “We’ve spent a decade or more investing massive sums of money in building our technology platform and solutions. Our firm has a proprietary Digital Gateway platform that we are going to deploy across these business law problems that emerge. We think we can provide a more efficient set of solutions than a lot of existing providers.” 

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Accounting

IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Accounting

Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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Accounting

At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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