Sunday, March 17, 2024

Attorney Bills

Extending last weeks discussion - Do lawyers pad their bills? Many do

"Fraudulent billing is a common practice in many large law firms."

I suspect the most common way is by overstating their work. In the linked article, when a small educational foundation called up a law firm with a simple question they were billed $885 for a one minute phone call. $85 for the call and close to $800 for research. Research which was never done. 

Another commonly used fraudulent billing technique is to bill two clients, or more, for the same work. When lawyers use forms they put together they often charge every client who uses the form for the work in creating it. Many, maybe most, lawyers do not even believe this is wrong even though the ABA does

My lawyers clearly overfilled me on a regular basis. I tried very hard to get them to detail the work they did but never got anywhere.  

An older but still relevant paper highlighting 16 egregious cases of fraud was done by Catholic University of America.

There is profound corruption on many levels within the justice system. Fraudulent billing is how many lawyers begin their career in crime.  

Sunday, March 10, 2024

The Billing Abuses of Lawyers

The Billing Abuses of Lawyers is a bit dated but just as relevant to today as when it was published. 

Some highlights:

Despite these extreme cases, lawyers -- with the notable exception of the high-visibility Hubbell, whose prosecution stemmed from the Whitewater investigation -- are rarely punished for billing abuses. Raleigh bankruptcy attorney Mark Kirby was indicted in federal court on 16 counts of billing fraud. Among other offenses, he billed 90 hours in one day. Between June 1990 and July 1991, Kirby billed a total of 13,000 hours, even though that 13-month period, calculated at 24 hours a day seven days a week, was only 9,500 hours long. Yet Kirby's trial resulted in a hung jury. His defense: everybody does it.

In 1991, Cumberland (Ala.) law professor William Ross surveyed 280 lawyers in private practice and 80 who worked in-house for companies. The results were shocking. Seven out of eight practicing lawyers said that it was ethical to bill a client for "recycled" work originally done for another client. Half said they had billed two different clients for work performed during the same time period, such as dictating a memo for one client while traveling for another.

Just as shocking were what lawyers concluded about their colleagues' billing practices: 55% said that lawyers occasionally or frequently "pad" their hours; 64% said they were personally aware of lawyers who had padded their bills. The in-house lawyers surveyed were even more clear: over 80% felt that the billable hour influenced how much time the outside lawyers they hired spent on a case, and 74% felt that the billable hour significantly decreased lawyers' incentives to work efficiently.

The reality is lawyers can make a lot of money for doing little work. Worse if such lawyers become judges, they feel it is their right to work far less than what they are paid for. 

As they say, money corrupts. 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Friday, February 23, 2024

Robert Tanguay's Case

I do not know Robert Tanguay nor do I have objective information on the facts of the case but his story is an interesting one. Much of it rings true to my ears. 

False allegations, no response from law enforcement because the perpetrator is part of the justice system, clear perjury, and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy which seemingly exists primary to extract as much money as possible from victims. I have experienced all of it. 

The worst part is not that an individual committed criminal and unethical deeds, it is that the system itself protects and rewards such individuals. Most do not realize just how broken our justice system is. instead of ensuring justice, it operates more like a criminal organization. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

Corruption

From the University of Exeter in England come a new study on corruption with a focus on those who enable such crimes. The thing most people do not realize about corruption is just how many "legitimate" people are involved. 

Lawyers, accountants, company service providers and other professionals often play essential roles in the movement of illicit wealth. They can be enormously powerful and effective at resisting both scrutiny and regulation. This influence, along with the complexity of this terrain, has led to a lack of consensus around what counts as “enabling” activity and what consequences should follow.

“Armies of professionals around the world are helping corrupt individuals conduct their dirty business,” said Global Anti-Corruption Consortium Director Alexandra Gillies.

Enablers are especially well  represented by lawyers who are often fully aware of their clients, as well as their own, illegal actions. 

In family court, it is often the lawyers who encourage their clients to commit crimes such as making false accusations. I am pretty sure that is what my ex-wife's lawyer did before she committed fraud herself

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Lessons In Chemistry

Last summer I read the book Lessons in Chemistry and a few weeks ago we finished watching the Apple TV+ series of the same name. Both were quite good but there were some differences between the book and TV show. Some random thoughts follow. 

In the book, the main character Elizabeth is a scientist working in a laboratory. She only has a masters in chemistry because she was unfairly forced to drop out of her Ph.D program after a professor who she was working with tried to rape her. Elizabeth, when struggling with the professor, stabbed him with a pencil. The school wanted her to publicly apologize in order to continue in the program. Elizabeth said she was sorry - sorry she did not have more pencils.  (what a great line!) In the TV show, Elizabeth was working as a lab assistant rather than a scientist. I presume Apple did this to make it seem even life was even more unfair to Elizabeth. I guess getting kicked out of school because you fought off an attempted rape was not bad enough. 

Elizabeth's research in the book is focused on abiogenesis (something I have an interest in as well) whereas her boyfriend Calvin, who is a world renowned scientist. works in a different area. In the TV series Calvin's research has stalled and he starts to work with Elizabeth on abiogenesis. This was a weird change and honestly I cannot figure out why it was made. Yes, it makes Calvin seem less capable, and maybe that was the reason, but it also makes Elizabeth seem less capable as it makes the research not entirely her own.  

The book is about many things, science, cooking, rowing, the relationship between Calvin and Elizabeth, discrimination against women, and the horrors of orphanages.  The book emphasized discrimination against women and added in discrimination against blacks. It was a bit over the top and distracted from the story. 

We seem as a society to have become polarized. You have the Trumpists on one end which, sorry to say, is more a religious movement based on intolerance for anything other than what their leader says. On the other end, you have people who who see everything through the light of discrimination against minorities or women.  There is a conservative joke which I like but feel slightly guilty about liking which goes:

World ends tomorrow. Women and minorities to be hit especially hard.  

I liked President Obama. He acknowledged the historic meaning of being the first black president but he never once said he should be elected because he was black. Compare this to Hillary Clinton whose main message was that it was time for a woman to be in the white house. That turned people off. The result -  many people who voted for Obama subsequently voted for Trump. The lesson - going overboard to make a point can turn people, at least some people off. Often, as with the 2016 election, with devastating results. 

Thursday, February 1, 2024

I Like Judge Lewis Kaplan

I kind of like Judge Lewis Kaplan. I really do. 

Kaplan was the presiding federal judge in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial agaisnt former president Donald Trump. The jury awarded Carroll  $83.3 million. Nice.

But the reason I like Kapan stems from a bit before the award. When Kapan caught Trump's attorney Alina Habba  directly lying to him, he threatened her with jail. I wish he had followed through with it. 

Come to think of it, by the rules Hobbs should be disciplined by the bar association for her actions but I suspect she won't be. It isn't like an attorney lying to a judge is all that unusual of behavior.

In my case, when Nelly Wince openly lied to the judge and in doing so committed fraud upon the court the judge, who openly admitted he knew Wince well, ordered that I pay her legal fees.