Caveat Emptor – Legal Buyer Beware

Posted on July 27, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

In December 2011, Debra Cassens Weiss posted an article on the ABA Journal website titled Suit by Fired Lawyer Claims Law Firm Encouraged Fraud with 3000-Hour Billable Quota.  The article reported on a California lawyer’s employment bias law suit alleging he was fired for failing to meet the firm’s 3,000 billable hour per year quota.  See http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/suit_by_fired_lawyer_claims_law_firms_3000-hour_billable_quotas_encouraged_

While the article is interesting, the over 140 comments that followed is the real story for legal consumers.  Most of the comments appear to come from lawyers.  A close reading of the attorney comments offers legal consumers a peek into certain attorneys’ beliefs and attitudes.  Some argue that an attorney cannot bill every minute they are in the office and to do so is billing fraud, while others say they can and it’s not fraud.  There is also talk among the lawyers about professional ethics.

Legal consumers should pay extra attention to the number of comments where attorneys admit that fraudulent billing goes on and talk about the pressures to do so.  See Comment #28 and #29.  For example, see Comment #83 by “Duxx”:

. . . I routinely billed 2700- 2800 hours a year and that was pushing it.  Were all those hours “legit”.  probably not.  It was stop watch billing.  I sat down at 1 pm with a transcript, stopped reading at 4:30.  I billed three and a half hours.  Did I account for the calls that interrupted me during that time, no; the bathroom breaks, no; the time to get up and stretch my legs……..    It all adds up.  Billing in tenths of an hour helps because if you breeze through the morning mail and read 6 letters for 6 different matters in 15 minutes, you get to bill 6 clients an aggregate hour.  You then have 45 minutes to work on a brief for another client.  An hour in real time results in 1:50 (rounded up) in [b]illable time. . . .

Although “Duxx’s” arithmetic is incorrect — six billing entries of one tenth of an hour is 36 minutes, not one hour — it is his admitted practice of billing more to a given client then time actually spent of which legal consumers should take note.  Also of note is Comment #54 by “Tom,” who as a client, apparently an institutional one, compared attorney bills on separate cases and noted billing based on the type of entry and not based on time spent.  As “Tom” states,

. . . I used to receive invoices showing that some attorneys were billing me 19-22 hours per day for court appearances on different claims.  That’s a neat trick when the court is only open for 9 hours.  This is standard practice for these firms and they get away with it because they are screwing different clients on different claims so it is difficult to trace. . . .

Although there are many of the 147 comments worthy of note, for legal consumers, Comment #95 by “Economist” sums it up:

I’m not an attorney, but I have worked with many.  In my experience, there are a few ethical attorneys who do great work and submit honest billings.  They are worth their weight in gold.  However, the vast majority of attorneys I’ve worked with do shoddy work and way overbill. . . . There are a few good ones, but they are rare.  Fraud/incompetence is the norm … sorry to say.

Just as “Economist” states, there are good attorneys, and LPR applauds them.  But the reality for legal consumers is that not all attorneys are created equal — they are not all honest and are not all competent.  There is a term used widely in the law, caveat emptor, which means let the buyer beware.  Dear legal consumers . . . beware.

You’ve got options.  The Center for Legal Practice Reform can help you navigate the attorney/client relationship and level the playing field.  Call LPR today for a free consultation – (301) 351-7970.  

 

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It’s 2012, Do You Know If The Attorney You Are Choosing Has A Disciplinary History?

Posted on July 20, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

In the long-running saga of Lindsay Lohan’s legal troubles, every single misstep — each dirty drug test, every missed court appearance, even a profane message etched on her fingernail — was publicized, scrutinized and dissected in tabloids the world over.

But there were two allegations of misconduct that came and went quietly, out of public view. They weren’t transgressions by the former teen star growing up in the limelight. They were by two veteran judges presiding over her case.

L. A. County Superior Court Judges Marsha Revel and Elden Fox at the Beverly Hills courthouse were reproached by the state’s Commission on Judicial Performance for their handling of Lohan’s DUI case, according to documents obtained by The Times.

This excerpt from Victoria Kim’s July 15, 2012 article in the Los Angeles Times, Oversight Panel Disciplines Judges in Lindsay Lohan Case, (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lohan-judges-20120715,0,5277330.story), brings to light disciplinary actions against two judges that would otherwise be kept from the public eye.

Does the same hold true for attorneys?  Are attorney disciplinary actions kept from the public?

More importantly, can a legal consumer find out whether their lawyer, or potential lawyer, has any disciplinary complaints against them, how many, for what, etc.?

The answer, in the vast majority of cases, is NO!

HALT (Help Abolish Legal Tyranny) – An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform, Inc., founded in 1978, seeks to raise awareness of this issue among others. See http://www.halt.org/what-we-do-for-you/hold-lawyers-accountable/lawyer-discipline/discipline-transparency.  According to HALT,

In today’s online information age, consumers can easily learn where a lawyer went to school, how long he or she has been in practice, [and] whether or not the attorney is in good standing with the state bar . . . . What the vast majority of Americans cannot easily discover, however, is whether the attorney they are considering hiring has a disciplinary record. . . . They have no way of knowing the number of complaints, the type of misconduct alleged, the number of investigations started, the number dismissed, and if misconduct is found, the type of severity of discipline imposed.

What legal consumers may also not know, is that the attorney disciplinary systems in the various states are almost all regulated by attorneys.  Also, according to HALT, over 30 years ago, an American Bar Association Committee headed by then retired Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark “pointed out that a panel of lawyers . . . were running the disciplinary system,” and that “this institutional bias rendered the system ineffective.” Just over 20 years later, an American Bar Association Committee headed by academic Robert McKay “noted that where elected bar officials controlled all or parts of a state disciplinary system, a conflict of interest was created.”  See http://www.halt.org/what-we-do-for-you/hold-lawyers-accountable/lawyer-discipline.

Unfortunately, there are currently no answers.  But, focusing on these issues and bringing them to light may start the process to eventually finding an answer to this conflict of interest for the benefit of all legal consumers.

You’ve got options.  The Center for Legal Practice Reform can help you navigate the attorney/client relationship and level the playing field.  Call LPR today for a free consultation – (301) 351-7970. 

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Legal Consumer Tip #1 – Take Notes

Posted on July 13, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

Dear legal consumers,

We ran across a very interesting blog post by Eric Cooperstein, a Minnesota lawyer who defends attorneys facing ethics complaints and fee disputes.  On Lawyerist.com: (law-yer-ist) n. The lawyering survival guide, Mr. Cooperstein posted Avoid Ethics Complaints by Taking Notes, http://lawyerist.com/avoid-ethics-complaints/, in which he provides lawyers the “tip[ ] & trick[ ]” that they should always take notes of conversations and meetings with clients.

Mr. Cooperstein writes:

I do not doubt my [attorney] clients when they assure me that there were multiple phone calls with the client and at least a couple of meetings, but there are no specific records of those contacts: when they took place, what was said, how long they lasted. The ethics investigation is suddenly at risk of being reduced to a battle between ‘Did not!’ and ‘Did so!’ The disgruntled client may be regarded as having a legitimate gripe.

Mr. Cooperstein goes on to advise the legal community:

The value of taking notes should not be underestimated.  Beyond providing a first line of defense against a client’s ethics complaint, notes can be helpful in tracking previous conversations with a client.

This advice should be heeded by legal consumers as well.  For every telephone call and meeting, legal consumers should note the subjects discussed and details of the conversation, including:

  • the name of the attorney(s) or staff person(s)
  • the beginning and ending time of the conversation
  • what questions were asked and what answers were given
  • what advice the attorney provided
  • what follow-up and timelines were agreed upon

That way, if there is ever an issue about the amount of time an attorney billed for client communication or what the attorney advised, legal consumers would have their own records to consult and substantiate any dispute they may have.

Just as Mr. Cooperstein advises his lawyer clients, a savvy legal consumer takes notes to protect themselves.  And that is a tip, not a trick.

You’ve got options.  The Center for Legal Practice Reform can help you navigate the attorney/client relationship and level the playing field.  Call LPR today for a free consultation – (301) 351-7970. 

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Why Do So Many Lawyers False Bill?

Posted on July 6, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

Perhaps many lawyers false bill because they can get away with it.  Padding billable time, for example, has become so common that many lawyers don’t even consider it improper.

Dan Ariely, the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University among other credentials, recently published a book that may answer this question: The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves.  Here is a link: http://www.amazon.com/Honest-Truth-About-Dishonesty-Everyone-Especially/dp/0062183591  Dr. Ariely’s book is an eye-opening look at dishonesty and can shed a bright light on why lawyers false bill and how common place it has become.

Dr. Ariely includes in his book a letter he received from a young man who at that time, worked for an economic consulting firm providing economic analysis on a case for a law firm.  Here is a telling excerpt from the young man’s letter that appears on page 35 of the book:

The reason I decided to contact you is that I have been observing and participating in a very well documented phenomenon of overstating billable hours by economic consultants. To avoid sugar coating it, let’s call it cheating. From the most senior people all the way to the lowest analyst, the incentive structure for consultants encourages cheating: no one checks to see how much we bill for a given task; there are no clear guidelines as to what is acceptable; and if we have the lowest billability among fellow analysts, we are the most likely to get axed. These factors create the perfect environment for rampant cheating.

The lawyers themselves get a hefty cut of every hour we bill, so they don’t mind if we take longer to finish a project. While lawyers do have some incentive to keep costs down to avoid enraging clients, many of the analyses we perform are very difficult to evaluate. Lawyers know this and seem to use it to their advantage. In effect, we are cheating on their behalf; we get to keep our jobs and they get to keep an additional profit.

Dr. Ariely identifies lawyers as having “terrible conflicts of interest” because “they both make the recommendation and benefit [financially] from the service, while the client has no expertise or leverage.”  See page 93.  On page 95, Dr. Ariely advises:

[W]hen we face serious decisions in which we realize that the person giving us advice may be biased . . . we should spend just a little extra time and energy to seek a second opinion from a party that has no financial stake in the decision at hand.

Up to now, there have been few if any resources from which legal consumers could get a second opinion.  This is one of the reasons LPR was founded; we provide second opinions to legal consumers.

You’ve got options.  The Center for Legal Practice Reform can help you navigate the attorney/client relationship and level the playing field.  Call LPR today for a free consultation – (301) 351-7970. 

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Billing Fraud: Past, Present . . . and Future?

Posted on June 30, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

Now that LPR has been established, we are receiving information from interested people about issues legal consumers face.  One such person sent us a link to an article published in 1999, written by Catholic University law professor Lisa Lerman, titled Blue-Chip Bilking: Regulation of Billing and Expense Fraud by Lawyers.  This article was written in 1999, and today these things are still happening: “padding, manipulating and fabricating” billings.

Here is an excerpt from Professor Lerman’s article:

In recent years, a disturbing number of well-respected lawyers in large established firms have been caught stealing large amounts of money from their clients and their partners by padding, manipulating and fabricating time sheets and expense vouchers. 3 Some have gone to prison, been disbarred, and/or been fired. 4 Others have escaped prosecution or discipline. 5 It used to be that lawyers inclined to steal from their clients wrote checks to themselves from their client trust accounts without client authorization and without having earned the money. Trust account fraud still occurs, but in recent years, theft from clients and from partners through billing and expense fraud has become more common and more pervasive.

These issues have been on the radar screen at least as far back as 1991 when John Grisham published his novel, The Firm.  In the novel, Mitch McDeere (Tom Cruise’s character in the 1993 movie) brings down the firm by exposing its practice of fraudulent billing.  But John Grisham’s The Firm wasn’t just fiction.  And, in 2012, these things are still going on.

In May of 2012, the Administrator of the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission filed a complaint against an attorney for “false billing”:

Between June 13, 2011 and June 30, 2011, Respondent was involved in reviewing documents for a project involving a client of the firm’s. During that time, Respondent recorded a total of 37.5 hours on the project. In July and August of 2011, Respondent performed little or no work on the client matter, but recorded 83.3 and 177.1 hours, respectively, on the matter.

If you want to read more, here is a link to the Complaint: http://www.iardc.org/12PR0052CM.html

So, legal consumers, herein lies a cautionary tale.   Over billing, false billing and/or fraudulent billing happens more than you think and few are called to task.  A smart legal consumer recognizes this and takes steps to protect themselves.

If you or someone you know has had similar experiences we are eager to hear from you. In the next few weeks, we will be talking more about how consumers can protect themselves.

You’ve got options.  The Center for Legal Practice Reform can help you navigate the attorney/client relationship and level the playing field.  Call LPR today for a free consultation – (301) 351-7970. 

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Up and Running

Posted on June 22, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

Dear legal consumers,

We have been very busy behind the scenes getting set up, helping clients, and working on the platform for The Legal Reformer.  Going forward, each week we will be posting about current events and news affecting legal consumers, suggesting books legal consumers should read, or providing tips for legal consumers.

There is much excitement around the water cooler about our recent launch and bringing about awareness and change to legal practices.  Please check back each week to see what’s going on in the new world of legal reform.

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Welcome Legal Consumers

Posted on March 21, 2012 by The Legal Reformer

This is The Legal Reformer’s first blog entry from the Center for Legal Practice Reform (LPR).

The Legal Reformer will keep legal consumers apprised of the practices that LPR is working to reform and give legal consumers a voice in that reform.

Visit our newly launched website, www.legalpracticereform.com.

Please participate in the dialogue.

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