Legal Bill Audit Blog

I belong to a practice section of my state bar that I call the "Does Anyone Have a Form I Could Use" practice section. I call the practice section by this name because most of the posts on the section listserve are from attorneys asking other attorneys if anyone has a particular form document that...

In this post as well as a follow-up post, I want to discuss the sensitive subject of how to discuss fee bill issues with your lawyer. I say that this is a sensitive subject because I find that while many individual clients are often downright angry about their high fee bills, many are at the...

Electronic filing (e-filing) of documents with state courts  is sweeping the country. If it is not yet in your state, chances are that it will be soon. Here is a list of the status of e-filing in state courts in the states. Preceding the implementation of e-filing programs, seminars and written material have been provided to lawyers...

  The Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company of Kentucky (LMICK) is a malpractice insurer for lawyers. As a proud, long time member of the Kentucky Bar Association, I am on LMICK's newletter mailing list. In a recent LMICK newsletter, I noted that several pages were devoted to legal billing issues. Coming at it from a "risk management"...

Whenever I do a seminar for attorneys on ethics, I always tell them that there are three things they should especially avoid doing: drugs, sex with a client, and messing with a client’s money.  I tell them that if they are caught doing one of these three things, they will find that harsher discipline will...

If you were to ask a group of lawyers to name an ethical rule that applies to billing for fees, I would suspect at least 90% would name Rule 1.5 Fees - probably because it is the only ethical rule that has the word "fees" in the title! Now ask those same lawyers to name other ethical rules...