Editorial
Front Page - Friday, September 10, 2010
I Swear ...
You’ll rue the (billable) day!
Vic Fleming
The ABA Journal periodically sends me an e-zine captioned “Law News Now.”
The most recent edition includes headlines such as
“Ex-Judge Reprimanded After Vowing to Let Cases Sit ‘Until Hell Freezes Over’”;
“Lawyer Suspended for Destroying Law Firm Docs in Court Restroom and After Hearing ”;
“Lawyer Gives Up Law Practice for Pulpit”; and, the one that really caught my attention this week,
“Ohio Lawyer Suspended for Billing More than 24 Hours in a Day.”
Not that I have anything against Ohio. After all, I spent the night there just last month.
I’ll spare you, and the respondent, the printing of the respondent’s name (note how the avoidance of pronouns does not even disclose this person’s gender).
An opinion issued by the Ohio Supreme Court indicated that this lawyer had, on three different occasions, billed courts “for more than 24 hours a day” for representing indigent clients.
On five other occasions, the attorney in question had submitted bills for more than 20 hours a day.
Finding that this practitioner had “failed to keep adequate records” of hours worked and sometimes had “merely guessed at the time … spent on a case,” the court suspended the respondent for two years, with the second year to be stayed if “a one-year probationary period” is satisfactorily completed.
The source for this story was “Legal Profession Blog,” at which a subtitle reads, “A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network.”
The blog provides a link to the Ohio Supreme Court opinion, in which I noted the following: “Viewed in isolation, [the] fee requests did not appear unreasonable to the judges and officials charged with reviewing them, but viewed in a continuum, they were simply incredible.”
I found interesting some of the comments under the story at the ABA Journal’s site.
Someone under the user name Kevin Chern wrote, “This story is not surprising but it is just one more example of why hourly fees don’t work for everyone.?Attorneys should be rewarded for efficiency, not their ability to track or waste time.”
Mark wrote, “You can actually legitimately bill more than 24 hours in a day. You work all day and night in Japan; and catch a nap, then fly east back home and work while on the plane.”
JDCPA wrote, “If you are on a 15 hour flight for Client 1 traveling to a hearing and while on the flight you are working on a brief for Client 2, why shouldn’t you be able to bill 30 hours – 15 hours to each of Client 1 and Client 2?”
BLY1 wrote, “When you give a law degree to someone with a BA in creative writing, you take your chances.”
Hadley V. Baxendale wrote, “I would advise against billing for 24 hours for working during the weekend in which daylight savings time begins. It’s a 23-hour max. Of course you could always bill 25 hours in the fall when the clocks are set back.”
More next week from “Law News Now.”
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at vicfleming@att.net.
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