If you notice that a junior associate on your team has over-billed, how would you handle it? I don’t want to get them in trouble, but noticed that they billed extremely high numbers even though I was doing all they work on the deal and they completely disappeared other than for client conference calls. Certain things that they billed for on the final invoice, I alone handled and never asked them to do. Appreciate any advice. I’m a mid-level in case it helps for context.

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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.

likesmart

This would be my approach as well.

like

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.

likesmarthelpful

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.

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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.

likehelpful

Thank you!!

likefunny

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?

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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.

smart

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