Institutional Independence: Lawyers and the Administrative State

The institutional structure where federal government lawyers practice is fraught with political and economic pressures that undermine the ability of lawyers to exercise independent professional judgment. A lack of candid legal advice in this space not only removes a pivotal fail-safe between legal and illegal state action but also precariously imbalances the powerful administrative state, exposing it to undue political influence. For these reasons, this Article argues that structural changes to administrative institutions must be made to support and nurture lawyers’ ability to independently determine the bounds of legality. Previous scholarship has examined the role of professional independence for lawyers generally; however, the legal academy has yet to explore the centrality of professional independence to administrative law or the structural pressures influencing its exercise. This Article joins a body of work that adopts a new institutionalist approach to professional misconduct. In doing so, this Article makes three principal contributions: (1) it outlines why institutionally sustained professional independence is essential to the federal administrative state; (2) it identifies institutional failings that impede government lawyers’ exercise of professional independent judgment; and (3) it proposes institution-based solutions to facilitate professionally independent conduct by government lawyers. By insulating government lawyers from excessive interference on core professional judgment calls, civil society may rely on these lawyers to help protect the basic structure of the rule of law

Audit evidence – top argument for final audit opinion

The following research aims to emphasize the importance of audit evidences, their quality characteristics and the professional judgment used to measure and to evaluate them in order to express their final audit opinion. There is no mathematical formula, neither a specific model in order to evaluate the quality of audit evidences. Their quality depends upon the professional judgment concerning the audit technical standards, the accounting references and nevertheless upon the auditor’s ethics. This is one of the reasons for which the financial audit is one of the edges of economical research, highlighting the credibility of financial statements.audit evidence, documentation, quality characteristics, audit procedures, professional judgment.

Assessing ridden horse behavior: professional judgment and physiological measures

The assessment of ridden horse behavior by 12 equestrian professionals (riding instructors n ¼ 4, riders n ¼ 4, veterinarians n ¼ 4) was compared with observed behavior and physiological measures (salivary cortisol and eye temperature). Horses (n ¼ 10) were ridden at walk, trot, and canter in a predefined test of approximately 2-3 minutes. Video footage of the ridden test (RT) was analyzed using Observer XT 10 and duration of behavioral states/events recorded. Saliva was collected in the stable, after the warm-up (WU) and at 0, 5, 15, 30, and 60 minutes after the RT. The saliva was analyzed for cortisol (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) and the difference between minimum and maximum concentration (ng/mL) and associated sample times recorded. Eye temperature was measured using an infrared thermal camera (MobIR M8), static images (stable, after WU, after RT), and video footage (WU and RT) with maximum eye temperatures derived from set intervals. Mean maximum eye temperatures during ridden work were calculated. Video footage of the RT was observed by the 12 equestrian professionals who each scored the horses on 7 performance parameters derived from the Fédération Equestre Internationale rules for dressage events and the training scale of the German National Equestrian Federation (relaxation, energy, compliance, suppleness, confidence, motivation, and happiness). These scores were compared with behavioral and physiological measures and correlations investigated (Spearman's rank order correlation). Higher percentage durations of high head carriage (ranging from 0 to 50.75% of RT) and the nose carried at an angle in front of the vertical (0%-74.29% of RT) correlated with overall less favorable assessment by the equestrian professionals (P < 0.05) and only the instructors associated neutral head carriage (32.76%-91.92% of RT) and vertical nasal angle (0.97%-68.90% of RT) as a positive sign (P ¼ 0.03 and P ¼ 0.04, respectively). Increases in salivary cortisol positively correlated with the duration of low head carriage (P < 0.05), suggesting that this way of going increased the demands placed on the horse. Increased eye temperature positively correlated with duration of nose carried behind the vertical when ridden (P ¼ 0.02) and negatively correlated with duration of nose carried in front of the vertical (P ¼ 0.01). Some discrepancy between physiological evidence and professional assessment of ridden horse behavior was evident as were differences between groups of professionals. Further evaluation of the association between behavioral signs and physiological measures is now required to ensure that the assessment of ridden horse performance is based on valid and consistent measures

On Teaching Professional Judgment

To answer the question posed by the conveners of this symposium, of course there is a gap between legal education and the legal profession. There has always been one, and quite possibly it has widened somewhat in recent years, if for no other reason than that the world in which lawyers practice has changed so much while legal education has changed relatively little. The external changes include the internationalization of legal transactions, the centrality of technology to many aspects of practice, increased specialization driven by the proliferation and complexity of statutory and regulatory schemes, and the overloading of traditional systems of civil and criminal justice. Perhaps more significant than any of these is the unhappy fact that today\u27s law school graduates will enter a society that views them with hostility and suspicion and regards their impact on our national culture and economy as often more negative than positiv

WAYS OF STRENGHTENING THE STATUTORY AUDIT EFFICIENCY

The integrity of the auditor’s opinion and the audit process conducting effectivenesshangs on the professional judgment applied on obtaining, processing and interpreting the internal andexternal information. Documentation is based on all the audit evidence collected through proceduressuch as: inspection, confirmation, documentation etc. Audit evidence is used to determine whether thefinancial statements present the economic reality of transactions and if they faithfully reflect thefinancial position of the company. To achieve a reasonable assurance, the auditor should gathersufficient and high quality audit evidence so that the view expressed in the report of the independentauditor should be based on a credible and relevant background.audit evidence, audit procedures, professional judgment, reasonable assurance.

PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT AND CREATIVE ACCOUNTING UNDER IFRS IN EX-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES: CASE OF ROMANIA

The accounting rules from each country evolve in time in order to respond the social, cultural and economical environment needs. After some communist countries (as Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, s.o.) joined the European Union an important number of local companies became to apply accounting regulation according with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the possible risks for companies' management from ex-communist counties by applying (mandatory or voluntary) International Financial Reporting Standards reporting regulation and professional judgment. Under the pressure of economic globalization all the ex-communist countries ware obliged to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards in the field of accounting. The main objective of this paper is to find out from the experience of different companies who already adopted IFRS which are the risks related to professional judgment application under IFRS on the financial statement users. As research methodology we integrated theoretical and empirical studies from accounting and law (especially from Romanian experience) in order to contribute to the cross-fertilization of our field of interest. As final results of our paper we find that the biggest risk of applying professional judgment prescribed by IFRS in ex-communist countries is to appear different creative accounting techniques which influence in a negative way the decision-making process for the financial statements users. During worldwide financial crisis the majority of Romanian companies tried to use in the most appropriate way the professional judgment in order to arrange their financial reports and to save company's money (in relation with local government) or to show higher performance (in relation with financial institutions) for the fund-raising process We identified several motivations including the existence of tax levies based on income, confidence by shareholders and workers in management that is able to report stable earnings and psychological expectations relating to increases or decreases in anticipated income.professional judgment, IFRS, globalization, creative accounting, risk

Moderation the Audit Experience and Professional Skeptism for the Effect of Time Budget Pressure and Audit Complexity on Audit Judgment

This study was intended to examine the partial effect of time budget pressure and audit complexity on audit judgment. The specific purpose was to determine the ability of contingent factors of audit experience and professional skepticism to moderate the effect of time budget pressure and audit complexity on audit judgment. Primary data was collected by questionnaire and analyzed by the Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) technique for partial and moderation effect. This study has six findings. First, time budget pressure has a positive but insignificant effect on Audit Judgment. Second, audit complexity has a negative but insignificant effect on audit judgment. Third, auditor's experience weakens but insignificantly and negatively the effects of time budget pressure on audit judgment. Fourth, audit experience weakens insignificantly the effect of audit complexity on audit judgment. Fifth, professional skepticism weakens the effect of time budget pressure on audit judgment. Sixth, professional skepticism weakens the effect of audit complexity on audit judgment. Keywords: time budget pressure, audit complexity, audit experience, professional skepticism, and audit judgment

Moral Judgment and Professional Legitimation

In this essay I would like to consider the nature of the role of lawyers from the point of view of both jurisprudence and the sociology of professions. From this perspective it is apparent that the judgment characteristic of lawyers\u27 expertise is not primarily the exercise of ethical discretion. Rather, it is the application of legal norms, which may incorporate moral principles by reference, but which are analytically distinct from morality. The task of legal education, and specifically of legal ethics education, might include training lawyers to be better at making moral judgments. In fact, there has been a fairly persistent (if minority) view that law schools should assume some responsibility for improving the ethical decision-making capacities of students. On this view, the interesting pedagogical question is how this should best be accomplished, with advocates tending to favor experiential learning environments such as simulations, live-client clinics, and pro bono representation. The traditional doctrinal law school course, complete with casebooks and Socratic questioning, certainly does not appear to have much to recommend, from the point of view of training better moral decision-makers. Legal ethics differs in kind from ordinary ethics because the social function of the law is to settle normative disagreement procedurally and to adopt a provisional social settlement of moral conflict that precludes acting on the basis of ordinary first-order moral reasons. Although law is a richly normative domain, full of value-laden concepts like fairness, loyalty, dignity, autonomy, well-being, reasonable care, and good faith, lawyers understand these concepts to have specific legal meanings, as terms of art. The following section sets out briefly the sociological and jurisprudential arguments for constructing a technical domain of professional expertise for lawyers, separate from the practices of ordinary moral reasoning. If that argument is successful, then the implication for the teaching of legal ethics is that a law school legal ethics course should focus on the values of lawyering that are imminent within the law governing lawyers-values such as fiduciary obligation and candor to third parties-and not purport to address the way people make moral judgments in ordinary life. My goal in this essay is to establish the way in which law and ethics interact, and thus to point the way toward a more comprehensive approach to teaching professional responsibility