BVWire traveled to Salt Lake City for the Business Valuation & Financial Litigation Super Conference hosted by NACVA. It was great seeing people in person, and a lot of interesting information was presented. We’ll have a detailed recap in the October issue of Business Valuation Update, but here are some takeaways from both in and out of the sessions:

• Continued court backups are pushing more cases to mediation, which represents an opportunity for valuation experts (e.g., take the mediation training and get on court-appointed lists);
• One firm is solving the recruiting problem by hiring undergrad students part-time;
• Zoom is “here to stay” for litigation up to and including depositions—trials will migrate back to in-person;
• Speakers in several sessions told attendees they were not charging clients enough—and that fees should be based on the value to the client, not billable rates;
• NACVA has a “Leadership Track” designed to give members the opportunities to advance in the profession;
• Private equity will soon own more than half of the top 20 accounting firms, predicts an M&A consultant in this space;
• For cannabis firms, valuation fundamentals apply—but company-specific risk ranges from 15% to 25%;
• Use the “bookmarks” function in Adobe for your valuation reports to make it easy to navigate—headings in Word can become bookmarks when you convert to PDF;
• Offshoring is a model whose “time has come” because many practitioners have become so busy that they can’t devote enough time to managing the firm; and
• Artificial intelligence will take hold in auditing and then move into forensic accounting before it spreads to valuation.

We’ll have more takeaways in next week’s issue!