[bachmeier]

When I was in grad school, I was doing some legal consulting on the side. A big part of one of the projects (a high nine-figure case) involved a bunch of Excel work. My boss wanted me at the trial with a laptop, Excel, and all the data just in case the other side revealed any errors in my results. He told me about other cases that were lost due to minor errors that, upon further review, had no meaningful impact on the analysis.

I did not believe Excel was the right tool for the job. As you might expect, I had high levels of stress until they announced a settlement right before the trial was set to begin. I later realized that I should have done everything elsewhere to confirm that my Excel results were correct.

[conductr]

You should have also hired an audit/accounting firm to vouch for the math. In some situations you can actually get them to be liable for the results being accurate.