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This makes me love my small firm plaintiff’s practice so much more. If I was billing, I’d log ridiculous amounts of hours no doubt, but I love the freedom to do what I need on a case and not have to track my time ever
Had a rainmaker who would reply "thank you" to every freaking email sent by responsible attys (including me) to his client for work he had absolutely nothing to do with. He billed the client for his inflated time, of course.
Can't remember now. But that sounds about right.
Pro
Jesus, now I’m concerned about adding 30 mins total of billables every day to clients who annoy me on their matters
Pro
Hahaha. Just to be clear, it’s .5 TOTAL, not .5 per matter….
Billing 2000+ hours in a year on a pro bono matter that was closed.
It’s all a crime, friends
Partner once told me he billed while sitting on the toilet if he thought about a case😆
I have a partner that says if he dreams about a case, he bills 8 hours.
Pro
This one was pretty bad. https://abovethelaw.com/2017/08/after-wedding-biglaw-associate-drastically-overbills-her-way-to-a-9-month-suspension/
368* pretty scary stuff.
California counsel once tried to bill us 1.2 hours for an 18 minute phone call... it was a call with us
Accurate billing narratives are important. It’s something I teach associates. Yes, note “prepare for” the call and then add follow up tasks, i.e. modify documents accordingly or prepare and circulate notes from call. Also show the arc of the work, from “begin” to “continue drafting” to “incorporate comments” to “circulate draft,” instead of repeated entries of “work on” document.
OP must be looking for ideas.
It’s cool, I’m following for some ideas myself. :)
In an ethics CLE, I learned about a partner who got disciplined for changing ~50 hours of an associate's time into his time. The client filed a grievance after metadata revealed the partner had only contributed a few hours to the brief.
Currently at a firm that does this to everyone that’s not a partner. I’m keeping my head down in order to move myself into a stable enough financial position that I can leave and open my own firm. I’m on partner track here, but I’m leaving asap because I don’t want to be associated with this at all.
Associate billed 72 hours over 2 weeks for an 8 page case assessment. She was getting freezed out of work so she made sure to bill 160 hours for the month on the little work she had.
There’s a partner at my firm that infamously bills about 3600 hours a year. People just laugh about it
Gross.
Named partner claimed to have billed over 300 hours in January. All despite the fact he had been at his condo for skiing every weekend.
Every inch of text on anything (document, email, pleading) = .2 of time
Billing 24 hours - leaving SC traveling to CA and back… 😑
It was def allowed… but even our billable system kicked it back as questionable!
Former boutique firm boss would take every last dollar left in a case.
Compensation structure was basically whatever was left in a file, associate keeps 30% in exchange for a below market salary. First year I wondered why I didn't get a giant bonus after billing 2k+ hours. Second year, I do a flat fee $1600 job, bill 2 hours at $150/hr, billing person asks me where the rest of my time is, because managing partner billed 4 hours at $350. So, not only was it a winner for me, but it put me $100 in the hole because I 'overbilled' the file.
I wish he would screw a client, but he does it in flat fee matters and on review time with no way to reasonably audit or question it.
A firm in nyc billed 500k on a civil case in 5 months and is under review.
At $500/hour, which is not that high for NYC, that’s only a 1,000 hours, which isn’t that much time to bill on a case in 5 months under many different circumstances. 15 years ago, I was trying a case against a large firm that had three attorneys and a paralegal in the courtroom everyday. I guesstimated they were billing about $125,00 per week for them, with more time being billed by the support attorneys and paralegals that I never saw.
Former colleague in ID would have his assistant bill him at 20 hours a day. Every day. Different matters, different clients, and he was a partner, so yeah...
I had a partner say to add 30% extra time to each task because that was the average amount cut by the carriers on each bill.
I have heard of workers comp lawyers that bill 5,000 hours a year. It might be sort of legitimate as they can bill lots of .1s on lots of files given all the simple paperwork they process.
There is a paralegal in my firm that is one of the top billers in the entire firm. The staff sees her abuse and how she double bills. But she is not questioned by the higher ups……