The world’s largest law firms have a lot to be grateful to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for. Were it not for this timely intervention by the regulators in the wake of the Enron scandal and the subsequent collapse of Andersen, a situation where the biggest law firms were branches of accountancy giants would not be difficult to imagine. The draconian US legislation in 2002 halted the firms’ expansion into law and subsequently reversed it as they moved away from providing non-audit services to audit clients.
Over the course of the next few years, the remaining big four largely spun off or dissolved their affiliated legal practices with names such as KLegal and Landwell following Andersen Legal into the annals.
