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Subject Expert
Anything that basically suggests those things will be noticed is probably sufficient. E.g. “I noticed that you billed for X. In the future, to avoid duplicating work, please hold off on that unless discussed in advance” or whatever.
Subject Expert
This would be my approach as well.
Assuming you’re sure this is over billing and not just poor narrative choice or poor attempts at taking initiative, this is something people get in real trouble with the bar for. Do you have control over the invoice? If so, make sure that time gets written off (ideally without explanation but can also say they went down a rabbit hole / were inefficient if you want to cover / need to cover). If not, you’re in a tough spot as letting that time get billed to the client is in itself probably an ethical breach given you know about the overbilling. You should make your own judgment call about whether the risk to yourself (albeit small) is acceptable to you. My inclination would be to report this to the partner and let them handle but if not then you should have a frank conversation with the associate, say you noticed the time entries, suggest perhaps it was just poor narrative choice but you recall handling that item alone so they need to be more careful about time entries moving forward as this can lead to serious consequences for everyone.
Depending on how green the junior is it’s possible the junior could be billing multiple client/matter #s to the same CM#. But probably best to let parter handle.
Mentor
You could ask them what they were doing on the deal in a very nice way. Like a check-in to see how everything is going or something similar.
Thank you!!
Conversation Starter
What if they were following along with the transaction docs and timeline in order to update a checklist or were on standby for some reason? How junior is this person?
It sounds like the partner got suspicious but wanted to give the benefit of the doubt as you would have more visibility into delegation of workstream. You should definitely report to the partner and not deal with the junior yourself.