Hilltop Advisors Litigation Support Practice includes providing a number of different services that support our clients’ litigation efforts. We have assisted numerous clients and their attorneys with our litigation support services in which we assist with the following types of activities:
- helping our client prepare for litigation –
- Gathering information that your attorney has requested (financial, operational, compliance and other data),
- analyzing and assessing information to support our client’s case,
- research on industry related topics,
- providing experienced staff to augment our client’s normal operations while Company employees are committed to the litigation efforts,
- supporting our client’s preparation for depositions,
- providing critiques of the opposing side’s Expert report,
- providing topics/questions to client’s attorney to cover in opposing side’s
- providing financial calculations (damages or other analytical results) that may support the case,
- performing forensic accounting activities that may be needed if financial information is not available,
- providing accounting research, standards, disclosures, etc. that may be helpful to the client’s case,
- providing fraud investigative efforts,
- identifying fraud controls effectiveness, vulnerabilities, etc.
- performing operational assessments,
- performing data analytics and validity testing,
- other finance, accounting, audit, operational and technology activities as needed.
Hilltop Advisors and affiliates have several Experts that have testified in the past. Our Experts are typically engaged when client’s counsel requires an Expert opinion to support the client’s case. Expert topics can involve, but not be limited to, the following:
- industry expertise for financial services, lending, loan servicing, fraud, policies and controls, etc.
- financial services regulatory compliance,
- financial services best practices (especially in the areas of lending, loan servicing, securitization, compliance, etc.),
- accounting technical advice on issues raised, interpretation of accounting literature, assessing completeness and accuracy of financial statements or presentation and/or assessing GAAP compliance,
- analyzing specific financial statement components,
- creating methodology for damages calculations,
- calculating damages for the case,
- critiquing valuation of specific assets and liabilities,
- conducting forensic reconstruction of financial information, if possible, to support our client’s case,
- conducting compliance audits that provide facts for the case, including but not limited to:
- loan underwriting reviews to assess compliance with Company policy, investor requirements, securitization requirements, regulatory requirements, etc.,
- reviews to assess the effectiveness of the Company’s QC or Compliance efforts (scope, review quality, personnel, sampling, findings, reporting, etc.),
- loan servicing loss mitigation activities and compliance with policies/regulations,
- assessing loan covenant compliance,
- assessing vendor compliance with service agreement and regulatory requirements,
- assessing Trustee and Document Custodian activities and compliance with service agreements and regulatory requirements,
- IT and data controls including assessing general controls, application controls, data integrity/completeness/accuracy and identification of significant intentional data manipulation,
- assessing the independent auditor’s financial statement audit or compliance report:
- review of workpapers that support the audit,
- review of compliance with Generally Accepted Auditing Standards i.e. was the audit conducted properly in accordance with such standards,
- assess compliance with AICPA and PCAOB professional standards,
- review of specific audit process to identify any significant concerns (i.e. process was not complete, auditor did not reach the appropriate conclusion, did not meet appropriate review and quality standards, audit documentation was not complete or accurate, the audit findings were not supported, scope of audit work and controls reliance was inappropriate, etc.),
- analyzing any contract costs for real estate construction projects/buildings/houses,
- assessing acquisition or sales contracts that may involve breach of representations and warranties, purchase price disputes, or compliance with other contract terms (non-compete, pricing issues, “earn-out” payments, etc.),
- performing document reviews – loan files, underwriting files, loan servicing files, collection files, securitization and trust documents, Pooling and Servicing Agreements (PSAs), other performance or employment contracts, etc.,
- gathering and analyzing the accuracy, completeness and overall quality of the data to be used in the litigation,
- providing data analytics (“slicing/dicing” the data in different ways to identify trends, unusual activity, etc.) especially for loan portfolios and loan servicing data,
- identifying “key words” for electronic file searches,
- reviewing electronic files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and other documents as well as email and other correspondence vehicles),
- assessing controls over financial information, transaction data, fraud, operations, technology and providing the attorneys with independent assessment reports to support the client litigation if possible,
- providing lending or loan servicing industry analysis, benchmarks, best practices, etc.,
- analyzing specific operational aspects that are the subject of the litigation such as assessing the underwriting standards applied to the loans being originated, or determining whether pricing of loans was done without bias, etc.,
- calculating and monitoring any settlement payments/payout as to accuracy of amount and payment timeliness.