A guilty verdict in the Andersen trial has handed a beleaguered accounting profession its bitterest pill yet to swallow.

The normally sedate profession, where each textbook begins and ends with the importance of integrity and trust, now has to live with the criminal conviction of a stalwart that led from the front.

The stakes, however, are much higher than just the emotional blow to a quietly proud profession. Accounting firms are nervously watching to see if the verdict will allow Enron shareholders and creditors to come after individual Andersen partners to recoup their losses. That, they fear, could set a precedent for other accounting scandals which come to light.

"A lot of the foundations of the profession has been thrown up in the air," said Mark Cheffers, an expert on accounting fraud who heads accounting consultancy www.accountingmalpractice.com. "And no one knows how it's going to land."

For Andersen, the jury's decision is the final nail in the coffin of the firm that began rapidly bleeding clients and employees since its indictment in March, experts say. The firm can no longer audit public companies without a waiver from the Securities and Exchange Commission and faces fines and a mountain of lawsuits.

The verdict came three days after the 12-member jury said it was deadlocked on whether Andersen obstructed justice by shredding documents related to its audit of Enron Corp.

The deadlock was widely seen as a moral victory for the firm since the case was initially billed as a slam-dunk win for the government. Experts say despite the final verdict, the trial still allows Andersen to save some face because of the long time it took for the jury to decide Andersen was guilty.

But the firm, which has sold off most of its profitable units, lost more than half of its US employees and almost a third of its clients, was not expected to survive whether it was handed a guilty verdict or not.

"The firm was dead anyway, what this does is accelerate its death," said Art Bowman, editor of the widely read industry newsletter Bowman's Accounting Report. "It does move the sale (of Andersen assets) from a seller's market to a fire sale."

Andersen began hurtling down the path to collapse in January when it admitted David Duncan, the lead auditor on the lucrative Enron Corp. account, destroyed documents. The venerable accounting firm, once considered a guiding light in the profession, swiftly began to disintegrate after the government indicted it on a single count of obstructing justice for the document shredding in March.

Clients, who are typically loathe to change auditors, fled in droves. Several overseas units also deserted the international network of Andersen firms.

Individual offices and employees in the United States began striking deals to join the remaining top accounting firms - now frequently referred to as the Final Four.

The series of blows crippled Andersen, and few expect the firm to ever get back on its feet. In a telling sign, Andersen recently resigned as the auditor for General Dynamics Corp. simply because it wasn't able to provide the scope of services the large defence contractor needed.

The firm, which audited about 2,300 clients at the start of the year, has so far lost about 700 clients and thousands of employees, Bowman said.

After cries from politicians and investor advocates, each of the Big Five firms agreed to stop offering consulting and internal audit services to the clients they audit and vowed to make changes to restore the profession's credibility.

Since then, the Final Four have scavenged for Andersen's leftovers, picking up partners, units and employees at dirt cheap prices - often for as little as 10 cents on the dollar.

But the verdict is troubling for accountants worried about whether the limited liability partnership that most accounting firms are structured as can withstand a guilty verdict. That structure is designed to protect individual partners from liability in cases of malpractice, but has never been tested on a scale as large as this.

"This has the potential to be an extraordinarily important decision because of the implications to the corporate structure of accounting firms," said Cheffers.

Concern also remains about whether the decision will add vigor to current efforts to regulate the industry and whether the remaining firms have the capacity to audit the clients who have so far stuck with Andersen.

"This will cause a pause of reflection for the profession," Bowman said. "Unfortunately, the profession has lost control of its destiny."