Integration of law with accouting: A more comprehensive learning experience

Abstract

Since accounting principles is often a surrogate for an introduction to business course, it is an ideal medium for introducing students to many aspects of commercial, civil, and criminal law. When using the approach suggested in this article, care must be taken not to detract from the accounting course or diminish the course content in any way. The accounting course may, however, be greatly enhanced by the allusions and references made by the accounting professor to the various laws. This approach to instructing accounting offers a number of benefits. Students are not only assisted in their immediate course work, but also throughout their entire business program. The accounting course is enhanced by comprehensive handout materials which are provided to the students and which can be retained by the students as ready references during the course and thereafter. (Examples of such supplemental materials are presented.) Upon conclusion of several terms of accounting, the students have obtained an otherwise unavailable exposure to the interrelationship of accounting and law.