In Indonesia at least, women pirate more music and movies than men. Which is interesting just because it is counter to gender expectations.
"women are more likely to pirate than men in Indonesia. This is true for all content categories, except for software,"
Extending last weeks discussion - Do lawyers pad their bills? Many do.
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.
The Billing Abuses of Lawyers is a bit dated but just as relevant to today as when it was published.
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.
Robert Tanguay, who I wrote about last week, has also published online some interesting and potentially helpful information for those involved with family court.
In addition, there is a video of him appearing (apparently) in court: