Frequently, the competing attorneys are inadequately equipped to educate the mediators and arbitrators about the salient facts and the governing legal issues in dispute. Consequently, trial courts increasingly have encouraged attorneys to involve their experts in the ADR process. The author describes the expanding role the expert witnesses may and should have in ADR. Civil litigation has become increasingly ...

Using Forensic Accounting Skills to Your Advantage When valuing a business, one essential step in the process is to review and analyze the subject company’s historical financial information. This information allows a business valuator to analyze the company’s past performance and pinpoint trends in the business to forecast its future performance. The author in this article shares his opinion regarding items ...

Connelly v. United States—Do Redemption Agreements Create a Business Liability? Most have some form of agreement and financing in place to address sudden changes in ownership. In Connelly v. United States, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court may have turned many of those plans on their heads. The question before the Court was whether a redemption agreement created a liability to the company. The author discusses ...

Ryan LLC v. FTC On August 20, 2024, a Texas federal judge stopped the FTC’s ban on noncompete agreements from going into effect on September 4, 2024. This decision comes after the FTC issued a final rule on April 23, 2024, that bans employers from imposing noncompetes on their employees. The FTC asserted that this exploitative practice kept wages low and suppressed new ideas. While the FTC’s ban will affect ...

Unimpeachable Neutrality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence The world of economic damage and business valuation is evolving rapidly, with artificial intelligence (AI) poised to become an indispensable tool for financial expert witnesses. As with any technological advancement, its use and implementation with regards to expert opinions, conclusions, and testimony must be handled with unimpeachable neutrali ...

Turn Clients into Your Advocates Existing clients can be your advocates and a source for future work. In this article, Rod Burkert discusses how to cultivate this under used referral source. I started my solo valuation practice in July 2000. Because I specialized in estate/gift valuations, most of my work was once and done. Looking back, my biggest regret was not cultivating more of those clients—who were a ...

My First Use of AI for a Work Assignment Recently, the author received an assignment which called for him to make a calculation that he had not performed in the past. With great hesitance, he decided to ask AI for help. In making the leap to enter the AI pool, he found the answer he needed and confidence to “try it again.” He has found a new tool to put in his litigation support tool kit. In this article, h ...

Ensuring Accurate Valuations with Real-World Testing One of the key assumptions valuation professionals must make is about a company's capital structure. This article explores factors valuation professionals should consider as they arrive at the debt and equity used to value the entity. Business valuation and financial modeling involve navigating a wide range of assumptions, and for the resulting values pro ...

A Forensic Investigation Opens IRS-Floodgate! In this article, the author critiques the IRS Participant Guide for Marijuana Companies. This 200-page guide provides general instructions to the service on the valuation of cannabis farms. The author argues that the compliance guide is completely inaccurate concerning the audit of cannabis cultivation. The author proposes that forensic and valuation professiona ...

From a Forensic Accountant’s Viewpoint Forensic accountants are frequently retained to evaluate economic damages arising from a multitude of circumstances. These engagements require a set of specialized knowledge unique to the facts of the case. In many cases, a forensic accountant will be retained to evaluate lost income arising from a business interruption loss. This article compares a forensic accountant ...

Awaiting Proposed ESOP Regulations In April of this year, the author wrote “Adequate Consideration” Defined? for QuickRead. Since then, the author has regularly checked for updates from the Department of Labor (DOL) with respect to the definition of adequate consideration as it pertains to section 408(e) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and employee stock ownership plans. Although ther ...

The Maggard v. Commissioner Tax Court Opinion S Corporations are required to have one class of stock. In this article, the author discusses the recent Maggard v. Commissioner U.S. Tax Court opinion and addresses whether a disproportionate distribution violates the one class of stock requirement. In any financial analysis of a company, we must consider potential tax liabilities. Since many small businesses o ...

Approaches, Standards, and Terms Although machinery and equipment appraisals differ from business valuations as a distinct branch of the appraisal practice, many overlapping concepts reinforce and support the key factors needed to establish a reliable and defensible opinion of value for the subject assets. This article provides a primer on the subject matter.   "In the world of valuation, the most important ...

A Meandering in the Mind(s) of ChatGPT (Part III of III) In the first two articles of this three part series, the author introduced a brief history of her own word processing software use and preferences, then used several models within an AI tool, ChatGPT, to generate an article with a single prompt. There are some issues with prompts. For instance, the author found that the tools sometimes interpreted the ...

A Meandering in the Mind(s) of ChatGPT (Part II of III) This is the second article of a three-part series. In the first article, the author introduced a brief history of her own word processing software use and preferences then used several models within an AI Tool, ChatGPT, to generate an article with a single prompt, “The article must be between 4750 and 5250 words, not including subtitles. The article mu ...

Rethinking How to Connect Effectively on LinkedIn While LinkedIn provides professionals an opportunity to connect, not all connections are desirable. In this article, Rod Bukert shares his views on how to effectively connect. I imagine you count many business valuation (BV) colleagues among your LinkedIn (LI) connections. But unless they’re sending you work, it’s not your best move. You see, if you are conn ...

Valuation Implications The U.S. government is the largest payor of medical costs, through Medicare and Medicaid, and consequently has a strong influence on reimbursement to healthcare providers. The 2025 proposed fee changes are significant. This article focuses on the proposed fee changes and how these changes may affect valuations of healthcare practices. The U.S. government is the largest payor of medica ...

A Meandering in the Mind(s) of ChatGPT (Part I of III) This series chronicles the use of an AI generation tool to generate content. Most of the uses the author has heard of from colleagues rely on an AI tool to generate content in response to various questions. Through the series the author shares iterations of an article that relied on AI and provides examples to show how a story can change using AI. Some ...

Healthcare Industry and Valuation Implications On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a seismic decision in which it explicitly overruled “Chevron deference,” limiting the ability of federal agencies to rely on their own interpretation of the laws they administer. This 6-3 ruling is expected to significantly impact the heavily regulated healthcare industry. The authors share their thoughts on how t ...

A Series on Managing Uncertainty and Fear The author has testified hundreds of times. Through these experiences, he has gained insight that is not written in the books, or at least not the ones he has been reading as a forensic and valuation professional. In this article, he shares additional insight on what is demanded by expert witnesses. As of the date of this writing, I have testified hundreds of times. ...