Forensic accounting and fraud investigation engagements are defined by their complexity: large document sets, multi-party discovery, court-imposed deadlines, and expert witnesses whose time is billed at premium rates. The coordination work surrounding each engagement — tracking document production requests, scheduling depositions across multiple parties and counsel, and assembling expert report packages — is exacting but not inherently expert-level work. Virtual assistants trained on litigation support platforms are taking over these functions, freeing forensic accountants and CFEs to focus on the analysis that justifies their fees.
Document Production Request Tracking
In litigation matters, document production is an ongoing, multi-round process. Subpoenas, requests for production, and informal production agreements create a continuous flow of incoming and outgoing document requests, each with a response deadline and a custodian list. Missing a production deadline or failing to log a received production can compromise case strategy and expose the firm to sanctions.
According to a 2025 Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Practice Survey, 47% of forensic accounting firms reported that document tracking and production coordination consumed more than 20% of case administrative time — time that could otherwise be spent on financial analysis or expert report development.
Virtual assistants handle the full document production lifecycle: logging each incoming request in Relativity or CaseGuard, assigning response deadlines, tracking custodian identification and document collection status, coordinating with counsel on production format requirements, and confirming receipt and Bates numbering of produced materials. VAs also maintain a production log that gives the engagement team and outside counsel real-time visibility into what has been produced, received, and outstanding across all parties.
For firms using Salesforce as their case management CRM, VAs update matter records with production milestones, ensuring that billing, status reporting, and engagement management are all working from the same current data.
Deposition Scheduling Coordination
Depositions in complex financial fraud cases require coordination across multiple parties: the deponent, their counsel, plaintiff's counsel, defendant's counsel, the court reporter, and often the forensic accountant who will attend or provide technical support. Scheduling a single deposition can require 15 or more back-and-forth communications across parties with competing calendar constraints.
A 2025 Litigation Support Management Association (LSMA) survey found that deposition scheduling consumed an average of 4.2 hours of attorney or paralegal time per deposition — time that costs far more per hour than the scheduling work itself warrants. Virtual assistants reduce this cost by managing the full scheduling workflow: distributing availability requests, coordinating across party calendars, booking court reporters, reserving conference rooms or video deposition platforms, sending confirmation packages with exhibit lists and logistics, and managing rescheduling when conflicts arise.
VAs also maintain a deposition calendar that integrates with the engagement team's schedule in Outlook or Google Calendar, with automated reminders for preparation milestones. For multi-deposition schedules common in large fraud cases, this systematic tracking prevents the double-bookings and last-minute rescheduling that inflate case costs and frustrate counsel.
Expert Report Assembly Support
The expert report is the centerpiece of a forensic accountant's contribution to litigation — but assembling the report package involves considerable coordination work that occurs before and after the expert writes the opinion itself. Source documents need to be organized and indexed, exhibits need to be prepared to specification, and the final package needs to be assembled, reviewed for completeness, and delivered to counsel on deadline.
According to a 2025 National Litigation Support Conference report, expert report delivery delays were cited as a contributing factor in case timeline slippage in 33% of matters reviewed. These delays were most commonly attributed to exhibit preparation backlogs and document organization tasks that remained on the expert's own plate.
Virtual assistants support the assembly workflow: organizing source documents by exhibit number and reference, preparing exhibit labels and indices, running consistency checks between report citations and exhibit numbers, formatting tables and schedules to counsel's specification, and assembling the final PDF production package for delivery. For supplemental reports responding to opposing expert analysis, VAs manage the document comparison workflow — tracking which exhibits were added, updated, or removed relative to the opening report.
Building a More Profitable Forensic Practice Through Delegation
Forensic accountants and CFEs are among the highest-billed professionals in accounting. Engaging their time in scheduling logistics, production tracking, and document organization is a direct tax on engagement profitability. Firms that systematize these functions through virtual assistant support recover that time for billable analysis and expert testimony preparation.
A 2025 ACFE Compensation and Work Survey found that forensic accountants who delegated administrative case coordination reported handling 22% more active engagements per year than those managing their own admin — with no reported decrease in expert report quality or testimony performance. Stealth Agents provides virtual assistants trained on Relativity, CaseGuard, and Salesforce who integrate into litigation support workflows immediately.
Sources
- Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), "Forensic Practice Survey: Time Allocation in Litigation Engagements," 2025
- Litigation Support Management Association (LSMA), "Deposition Scheduling Efficiency Study," 2025
- National Litigation Support Conference, "Expert Report Delivery: Timeline and Quality Benchmarks," 2025
- ACFE, "Compensation and Work Survey: Productivity Drivers in Forensic Accounting," 2025