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Litigation Summary & Legal Expense Review

This Litigation Summary worksheet provides an area to accumulate, summarize, and document the entity’s description and evaluation of contingencies related to litigation, claims, and assessments and the disposition of such items. This worksheet also provides an area to document materiality limits for legal representations and information concerning in-house counsel.The Legal Expense Review worksheet of this workbook allows the auditor to document the review of legal expense accounts and attorneys' invoices to identify firms to receive a legal representation letter.
Entering Data
For the Litigation Summary worksheet, the information needs to be obtained for each individual case or item, unless the attorney handling the litigation has evaluated items in the aggregate in accordance with materiality limits specified by the auditor. The worksheet provides space for five litigation items, but multiple workbooks can be used to accommodate additional items.
The Description and Disposition "fields" are textboxes, and as such, are designed for easier text input than traditional Excel worksheet cells. For further information concerning text box functionality, see the section “General Workpaper Functionality and Tips for Entering Data”.
To navigate the spreadsheet, the "Tab" key will move the cursor forward through the input cells and textboxes. Conversely, "Shift + Tab" will move the cursor backwards through the input cells and textboxes. [If the cursor is in a designated input cell, the "Enter" and "Shift + Enter" (on the primary keyboard) will perform similarly. However, if inside a textbox, the "Enter" key performs as a "hard return".] Because the worksheet was designed to accommodate text input, mouse maneuverability is possible, but not as practical.
The Legal Expense Review worksheet utilizes conditional formatting and data validation to assist the user with proper data input. See the section “General Workpaper Functionality and Tips for Entering Data” for further information concerning how this workpaper utilizes conditional formatting and data validation. Certain columns (including the attorney’s name and address) accommodate multiple rows of data entry (through “wrap text” functionality). The row height will automatically adjust to accommodate the particular cell within a row that has the most lines of input data.