US 8,484,105 B2 · System and method for providing business audit responses from legal professional

Abstract

A system and method facilitates the audit process involving a business client, an auditor, and a third-party by providing confirmations for the client upon the auditor's request. An auditor or requestor receives an audit number from the audited client as evidence of authorization for requesting confirmation from a third-party, such as a legal professional. The confirmation request submitted by the requestor will be stored in a network-based computer confirmation system and transmitted to the relevant third-party responder. The third-party then provides necessary confirmation data (i.e., response data) to the confirmation system which forwards a completed confirmation to the auditor. The involved third-party can be a bank or financial institution, another entity in business relationship with the client, or any other entity that has access to the requested data associated with the client, such as a legal professional.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method of obtaining an electronic confirmation of client account data from at least one responder comprising the steps of:

receiving, via a communications network, client account data from a computer associated with a requestor at a computer of a confirmation system;
storing the received client account data in a computer database of the confirmation system;
receiving authorization to request confirmation of the client account data at the confirmation system via the communications network;
providing a confirmation request from a computer of the confirmation system to a computer of the at least one responder via the communications network after receiving the authorization wherein the responder is a legal professional and the client account data comprises at least one of a trust account balance, amount in controversy, or accrued fees of a client of the legal professional;
receiving response data via the communications network from the computer associated with the responder at the confirmation system, wherein the response data approves the client account data;
generating a completed confirmation as a function of the received response data;
and
providing the completed confirmation to the computer associated with the requestor.

5 more elements

A computer readable storage media having computer executable instruction modules operable to obtain an electronic confirmation of client account data from at least one responder by performing the steps of:

receiving, via a communications network, client account data from a computer associated with a requestor at a computer of a confirmation system;
storing the received client account data in a computer database of the confirmation system;
receiving authorization to request confirmation of the client account data at the confirmation system via the communications network;
providing a confirmation request from a computer of the confirmation system to a computer of the at least one responder via the communications network after receiving the authorization, wherein the responder is a legal professional and the client account data comprises at least one of a trust account balance, amount in controversy, or accrued fees of a client of the legal professional;
receiving response data via the communications network from the computer associated with the responder at the confirmation system, wherein the response data approves the client account data;
generating a completed confirmation as a function of the received response data;
and
providing the completed confirmation to the computer associated with the requestor.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for providing business audit responses from legal professional

Life of this patent

System and method for providing business audit responses from legal professional

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20