Carolyn Elefant at My Shingle provides a link to a SmartBiz.com article with tips for businesses trying to spot overbilling by their lawyers: "Cut Legal Costs: 10 Red Flags that Signal Potential Overbilling." The link to Carolyn's post (and at least three comments by a single skeptical reader) is here.
One of the SmartBiz tips caught my eye: "Friday billing: Most senior partners don't work much on Fridays. If you're being billed for senior partner time on Fridays, be alert."
To the contrary, most senior partners do work on Fridays, and those who don't aren't going to bill their clients as if they did. Frankly, the entire SmartBiz article is a little lame. True, from a client's perspective, there may be some "overbilling" going on from time to time--that is, taking too much time to accomplish a task--but a lot of the SmartBiz article concerns outright fraud. I think billing fraud is very rare, and when it happens, it's not going to take the form described in the SmartBiz article. Or am I just incredibly naive?
In any case, Carolyn's advice to lawyers who bill by the hour is well-founded: look at the SmartBiz tips and "see if any of your billing practices may cause your clients to wonder whether they're being overcharged."
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