The Effect of Litigation on Public Accounting as a Career Choice

Recently leaders of the accounting profession have been supporting enactment by the U. S. Congress of tort reform legislation. One of the supporting arguments raised in favor of such reform is the negative impact on the accounting profession of litigation under the existing system. One element of this impact, according to some significant voices, is that it is causing many of the brightest accounting majors to reject public accounting as a viable career option. This paper reports the results of a study which investigated one aspect of this claim, a reduction in the number of high quality applicants in the initial hiring pool. Our finding is that the claim does not appear to be valid with respect to any reduction in this pool. This finding is consistent regardless of gender of the respondents, their prior work experience in the accounting profession or their knowledge of litigation exposure of accounting firm partners