From Staff to Partner, How Agentic Audits Reshaped Every Role at LSL

Key Highlights

• Roles shifted from doing the work to reviewing it: staff reviews exceptions instead of testing manually, seniors own full audit sections, partners focus more on client advisory.
• Increased EBP audit capacity in year one, despite onboarding and audit season overlapping, with bigger savings expected ahead.
• Completed a firm-wide migration to Fieldguide in three months with zero disruption to client engagements.

About LSL, LLP

LSL, LLP is a full-service public accounting firm headquartered in Irvine, California, with four offices across California, Texas, and Arizona. Founded nearly 95 years ago, the firm has been recognized as an Accounting Today Regional Leader for four consecutive years and named to Inside Public Accounting's Top 200. Its audit and assurance practice covers financial reporting engagements for clients in automotive, entertainment venues, private schools, and religious organizations, along with a sizable government audit practice and a growing employee benefit plan book. Adam Odom, CPA, a partner at LSL, helped lead the firm's move to Fieldguide and co-chairs the automation and software committee that oversaw its rollout firm-wide.

Outgrowing a Legacy Platform

LSL ran its engagements for years on a legacy audit platform paired with a separate PPC methodology library. The two systems were never fully in sync. "Our audit software and our firm's methodology weren't well integrated," Odom said. "It was really a mess."

For Odom, the cost of staying put went beyond inefficiency. "If we don't act now," he said, "we're going to be left behind." That urgency sent LSL's automation and software committee looking for alternatives that could support the firm’s needs. "We evaluated a ton of different software solutions. We actually drilled it down to three top vendors," Odom said. "We audit firms in a wide range of industries in addition to a large government practice. Throughout the process, we were asking ourselves, 'How does a government audit work within each platform?'"

The answer: Fieldguide. Odom described the decision in plain terms: "We really needed an AI-native solution that was truly forward-thinking, with AI embedded inside the audit software, that helped us through every stage of the audit. In my opinion, it was a great decision."

The Transition to a Fully Agentic Audit Practice

Within three months, onboarding and implementation spanning workpaper setup and financial statement migration were complete, with every audit at the firm now running on Fieldguide. Odom had heard onboarding promises from software vendors before and learned to discount them. "Almost every software company out there says they provide white-glove service. I've heard that so many times, and in reality that promise is rarely met," he said. "Fieldguide delivered on the white-glove promise. The whole process has really been amazing. The team meets with us weekly to go over any concerns or questions we have. We even have weekly office hours too."

LSL's employee benefit plan (EBP) practice shows the clearest results so far. After moving the full engagement onto Fieldguide, the team is already seeing measurable time savings in year one. "We're seeing fewer hours allocated to our employee benefit plan audits, with our staff’s capacity expected to grow significantly in the long term," Odom said.

Some of the first Field Auditor workflows, Fieldguide's agentic testing engine, that LSL incorporated into their financial statement audits proved impactful from the start. "The search for unrecorded liabilities agent has been huge for us," Odom said. The agent executes the audit procedures end to end, from the population file to sample testing using the underlying support documentation, before an engagement team member ever opens the workpaper.

That shift changed what staff actually do with their time, effectively moving from preparer to reviewer. Odom doesn't believe it will limit his team's growth, especially when it comes to developing their technical knowledge, and he debunks the misconception that they'd be missing out on "necessary reps" to learn.

"Staff used to only understand the what. They knew how to perform a UL search by the book step-by-step, but they didn't necessarily understand the why behind it," he said. "Now with AI they're reviewing more of the exceptions to build up their audit expertise and professional judgment. Why did this fall out of scope? Why was the liability not recorded? Truly understanding the why is way more important, in my opinion, than the what or the how."

Every Level of the Firm Evolved

Odom mapped that shift in responsibilities across every level of the org chart. "Before, our staff would perform detailed testing manually," he said. "Now, they're managing the technology and agents, reviewing the exceptions that are being flagged, and asking the why behind it. Seniors are now owning whole audit sections, coaching staff, and working more closely with the client."

The shift reaches beyond the staff doing fieldwork and preparing workpapers; Odom has seen every level of the firm evolving. "Supervisors used to run fieldwork to budget; now they're running the engagement rhythm and starting to do more advisory work," he said. "Managers used to be reviewing files, clearing review notes, and finishing up the financials. Now they're going to be truly owning the risk, advising our clients, and developing our whole team. And partners, we used to review everything and sign the report. Now we're truly focused on strategy, business development, and client advisory work."

"We are spending less time on the compliance work and spending more time with our clients, advising them on growing and improving their business," Odom said.

LSL is All In

None of it happened on its own. Odom is candid that the software was the easier half of the change. "It is a mindset change," he said. "If you don't have the right people, it fails. Luckily we had the right people, everyone was on board, and it showed. That's what made it successful." He credits LSL's own automation and software committee, not any single partner, with keeping the rollout on track: "You do need champions in this. It was really our automation and software committee that led this, and is still leading it." For a firm that spent years trying to get its audit software to support its own methodology, that is the outcome LSL was actually after.