Accounting and Finance for Lawyers in a Nutshell, 4th Edition (In a Nutshell (West Publishing))

Law schools purport to teach you to "think like a lawyer." While this is important for navigating the world of courts and contracts, it can be a huge obstacle to communicating with non-lawyers (especially non-lawyer professionals). As a lawyer who works frequently with statisticians, chemists, and accountants, it has been my my experience that the communication divide between attorneys and accountants is the most difficult. Accountants use flexible, conventional terms and processes to reach precise quantitative results. Lawyers use precise, qualitative language to control fuzzy indeterminate results. Worst of all, we share many jargon words (liability, equity, asset) but use them differently.

This book is written for a lawyer who "thinks like a lawyer" and wants a book to just "lay it out." It assumes no prior knowledge and all the jargon terms are defined at the outset. Areas of ambiguity or subjectivity are clearly flagged. The author then walks us through accountancy, step by meticulous step, without any advanced math. Like all good legal writing, it is dense with information, but perfectly clear and as brief as possible.

This book will teach you the language of the accountant and how to read financial statements. If you are looking to learn to DO accounting, you need a different book. But if you want to work effectively with accountants, to see relevance in financial statements, and to prepare expert witnesses, this book is peerless. If only there were a similar book for accountants, so they could understand me!

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Book Description
Publication Date: September 11, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0314207872 | ISBN-13: 978-0314207876 | Edition: 4
This nutshell provides a well-rounded summary of the relevant accounting areas from basic financial statements to complex earnings-per-share ratios and corporate finance and valuation. Learn how to recognize revenue, expenses, assets, and liabilities. Reviews accounting principles for many different areas, including investments, long-term debt, leases, stocks, and partnerships. This edition discusses recent developments such as expanded use of fair values in financial statements and guidance on how to determine fair value, accounting for service agreements in securitizations, and revised rules on accounting for acquisitions.

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