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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Corporate attorney.

Most lawyers with billable hour quotas defraud their clients by billing for time not worked.

Sometimes it's minor "rounding" or "estimating", but it many cases it's intentional and deliberate.[/quote]

i can attest to this. i was chastised for working too quickly on a memo. told i should have taken my time, and kept the meter running to go to the bathroom, etc.[/quote]

This is a tough one. Working too quickly on a memo is a problem for some of my associates because what they produce is shit. Good legal work that properly assesses risk (to client and firm) takes a long time. Writing it fast and dropping it into an email is awful practice. Being told you did something too quickly and should have taken your time doesn't mean you should have billed more. In the grand scheme, a 5th year spending a few extra hours is meaningless to me.

Overall, in my experience, the myth of the purely fraudulent biller this day and age is way overblown. There are a handful of colleagues I've known who were regarded as having a heavy pen, but that is a long term detriment (though in some cases maybe it works well in the short term). I've known many more very good lawyers who consciously underbill for various reasons--didn't feel right charging to "get up to speed", went down a wrong path analytically, pride in being ultra bright and don't want to admit a certain task took as long as it did, etc.

If you want dirty secrets re big law firms, they're out there. I don't think over billing is among them.[/quote]

This is well stated. [/quote]

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