Legal Bill Audit Blog

Did your attorney discuss with you less costly means of achieving your stated goals? If not, he may have violated his ethical duties pursuant to the American Bar Assn. Rules of Prof. Conduct (RPC). RPC 1.4 governs "Communication" with a client and specifically provides that "a lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary...

Okay. Your lawyer has presented you with a sizable legal bill to pay.  And as far as you can tell in reading through the bill, the time billed for each thing your lawyer did seems to be reasonable. But, you are thinking that it just seems like there was an awful lot of work he did. So is...

The single biggest cost issue I come across in my legal bill reviews can be put under the category of "inappropriate staffing" of cases.  Appropriate case staffing usually means a partner, associate, paralegal, and legal secretary in all but the most complex of cases. While some smaller firms may not have associates or even legal secretaries, any...

If you have identified the specific legal billing issues you object to and have determined that you have adequate grounds for objecting, the next step is to communicate directly with your lawyer.  In communicating with your lawyer on legal billing disputes, it is important that all communications be in writing. If communications are by phone or...

One thing that I always recommend to companies I work with is to add to their litigation and billing guidelines a requirement for attorneys to always assign tasks to less costly legal staff wherever possible. This is not only a common sense requirement, but it also mirrors an attorney’s ethical duties as well as well...

Two of the more common issues encountered when reviewing legal bills are "over lawyering" and "over staffing." Over lawyering occurs when a lawyer does too much legal work in a case and over staffing occurs when there are too many lawyers doing legal work in a case.  While they are different concepts, they nevertheless are considered...