Opponents of multidisciplinary practices claim that MDPs will lower professional standards for lawyers. And at least one Big Five accounting firm seems bound and determined to prove that its multidisciplinary practice has a considerably more casual attitude towards rules and regulations than most law firms do.
A recent investigation of PricewaterhouseCoopers detailed more than 8,000 ethical violations by firm partners. The report handed the anti-MDP crowd a large club with which to bash the CPA firms’ legal ambitions. If the accountants don’t pay attention to their own professional rules, how can they be expected to abide by anyone else’s?
