Messrs. Sellberg, Loconto and Hartz add that their consultants also aren't interested in working with obsolete code. But officials at these firms say that is because debugging old code isn't a growth business. The problem, as everyone knows by now, is that old computer codes programmed to read dates only as two digits will be unable to read the year 2000. Unless date sensitive software and hardware are fixed, experts say, computers controlling everything from credit-card billing records to inventories will be confused and shut down. As a result, corporations are swamping technology companies with requests to fix their computers.
Cost estimates range into the hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide.
While consultants haven't yet been targeted in lawsuits over work related to the year 2000 problem, several companies have sued software manufacturers, including Intuit Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., and Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., over alleged glitches that make their products unable to process year 2000 dates. The companies deny the allegations. Consultants could become targets in the future. Mr. Graziano declined to identify those clients. The consulting divisions at the big accounting firms are doubly edgy about litigation, which could include lawsuits related to audits done by the firms' accounting units.