This study investigates the consequences of an audit firm switching its organizational structure from an unlimited liability general partnership (GP) to a limited liability partnership (LLP). We do this by taking advantage of a unique characteristic of audit practice in Japan, whereby audit firms conventionally assign two or more signing partners for each audit engagement, and the data for audit fees and the composition of the engagement team are also available. The empirical results show that the number of signing partners decreases whereas audit fees increase after audit firms switch from a GP to an LLP. In addition, the number of experienced staff with CPA licenses assigned to an audit engagement increases after the organizational structure change. Finally, we identify no consequences for measures used in prior studies to proxy for audit quality after audit firms switch to an LLP.

中文翻译：

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法律责任、审计人力分配和审计质量：来自日本的证据

本研究调查了一家会计师事务所将其组织结构从无限责任普通合伙 (GP) 转变为有限责任合伙 (LLP) 的后果。我们利用日本审计实践的独特特征来做到这一点，审计事务所通常为每个审计业务分配两个或两个以上的签约合伙人，并且还可以获得审计费用和业务团队组成的数据。实证结果表明，在会计师事务所从 GP 转为 LLP 后，签约合伙人的数量减少，而审计费用增加。此外，在组织结构发生变化后，分配给审计业务的具有注册会计师执照的经验丰富的员工数量有所增加。最后，