Business Practices, Records, and Reporting
Running a Compliant Practice
A licensed agency must operate as a business: entity formation, licensing of the agency and its employees, insurance, fee agreements, billing, and recordkeeping. A candidate must understand the record-retention obligation - client files, investigative reports, evidence logs, and financial records must be kept for the period the board requires and made available on lawful demand. Know the elements of a compliant client contract: parties, scope, fees and expenses, confidentiality, limitations, and signatures.
Reports
Reports must be accurate, objective, and free of opinion presented as fact. Structure: case identification, assignment, methodology, findings, evidence references, and conclusions clearly labeled as such. Avoid defamatory language, speculation, and conclusions outside the investigator's competence. Know that reports may be discoverable and that destroying records after a request can create liability.
Traps
Questions test whether you know that a report is a business record with legal consequences, not an informal memo. Another trap: conflating billing practices with licensing compliance - overbilling is an ethics and contract issue, not automatically a licensing violation, though fraud can be both. Also watch for items suggesting records may be discarded once a case closes; retention rules govern.
Rule of Thumb
Write every report as if the subject will read it and a court will scrutinize it. Separate fact from inference explicitly.
Worked Example
A client disputes an invoice. The agency should produce the signed engagement letter, time logs, and expense receipts. If those records were not kept, the agency cannot substantiate the bill and may face both a contract dispute and a board complaint.