A majority of the nation's top 100 accounting firms surveyed view litigation support and its close counterparts, forensic accounting and fraud investigation, as leading areas of growth for their practices, according to March 2004 survey results released by Accounting Today magazine.

That's why Margaret Grisdela, president and founder of Boca Raton-based Legal Expert Connections, is carving out an accounting niche within her general expert witness marketing practice to capture the market in its relative infancy.

Ms. Grisdela, who targets accounting and consulting firms operating at the national, regional or state level to help generate a continuous pipeline of legal prospects, notes that the market is simply too large for most accountants and other experts to tap into it on their own.

"State courts alone processed over 96 million new court cases in 2002, according to the National Center for State Courts," explains Ms. Grisdela. "Few CPAs, even those with a dedicated marketing department, have time to devote to the intense web-based research that is required to unearth background information on law firms and current cases that may need specialized expert witnesses."

"Accountants need to achieve a balance between plaintiff and defense cases in order to protect their credibility in the litigation support market," informs Ms. Grisdela. "It's also important to develop a broad client list in order to avoid conflicts that can emerge when working with only a few law firms."