Section 309-B:19 Licensees' Working Papers and Clients' Records.
I. Subject to the provisions of RSA 309-B:18, all statements, records, schedules, working papers, and memoranda made by a licensee or a partner, shareholder, officer, director, member, manager, or employee of a licensee, incident to, or in the course of, rendering services to a client except for the records that are part of the client's records, shall be and remain the property of the licensee in the absence of an express agreement between the licensee and the client to the contrary. No such statement, record, schedule, working paper, or memorandum shall be sold, transferred, or bequeathed, without the consent of the client or the client's personal representative or assignee, to anyone other than one or more surviving partner, member or stockholder or new partner, new member or new stockholder of the licensee, or any combined or merged firm or successor in interest to the licensee. Nothing in this section shall be construed as prohibiting any temporary transfer of work papers or other material necessary in the course of carrying out peer reviews or as otherwise interfering with the disclosure of information pursuant to RSA 309-B:18.
II. A licensee shall furnish to the client or former client, upon request and reasonable notice:
(a) A copy of the licensee's working papers, to the extent that such working papers include records that would ordinarily constitute part of the client's records and are not otherwise available to the client; and
(b) Any accounting or other records belonging to, or obtained from or on behalf of, the client that the licensee removed from the client's premises or received for the client's account. The licensee may make and retain copies of such documents of the client when they form the basis for work done by the licensee.
(c) A copy of computer-prepared client data diskettes containing client ledger data, spread sheet data, client documents and any other such data of the client or former client that would ordinarily constitute part of the client's records and not otherwise be available to the client.
III. Nothing in this section shall require a licensee to keep any work paper beyond the period prescribed in any other applicable statute.
Source. 1999, 236:1, eff. Sept. 7, 1999.