[The following is an excerpt from my book Red Flags In Legal Bill: What Warning Signals Are Attorneys Sending?]

When discussing larger time charges, there is perhaps no larger time charge that can be made in a legal bill than the total amount of time charged in one 24-hour day. However, believe it or not, I have found some attorneys who have billed for more than 24 hours in one day!

Billing for long work days can be expected in some cases. For example, attorneys occasionally do need to put in long days to prepare properly for a trial or for an arbitration or to respond to some type of emergency situation.  But if an attorney (or paralegal) is billing 8 to 10+ hours a day just doing routine work on a file, this should raise a red flag. 

For one thing, consider that few people can do their best job working 10 to 12 hours a day, day in and day out.  Attorneys and paralegals are no different than anyone else in that regard.  Don’t forget that in addition to billing for 10 to 12 hours, attorneys and paralegals also have to eat, go to the bathroom, answer phone calls, communicate with other staff, and in short, do all the other things that office workers normally do while at the office.  In fact, as I have noted, to generate 8 hours in billing, legal ethicists who have studied the issue say that an attorney or paralegal must spend at least 12 hours or more in the office.

Thus, it is that billing 8 to 10+ hours a day for “routine” work should raise a red flag as it could be a sign of possible bill padding.  This is why whenever I encounter 6 hours or more billed in a day when reviewing a legal bill, my antennae automatically goes up, and I tend to scrutinize the billing entries for that day even more closely, just as courts will do.[1]

But, even if there is no bill padding going on, billing for long work days on routine matters could also point to some other red flag issues.  For example, it could be a sign that the attorney does not have adequate support staff.  In this regard, note that the trend among law firms for some time has been to eliminate support staff.[2] 

Technological advances accounted for the need for less support staff at law firms as well as at many other types of businesses. But some of the work previously done by law firm support staff does not go away because of technological advances. This leaves many attorneys (and paralegals) no choice but to undertake work that was previously done by non-billing support staff, such as copying documents, Bates stamping documents, or making arrangements for a meeting room.  These types of activities still need to be done by someone, and when attorneys or paralegals do the work, they oftentimes try to disguise it as attorney work on the legal bill. For example, an entry by an attorney for “working on exhibits” (without stating what specifically is being done) could mean that the attorney was carefully going through the file to determine which exhibits or use (which would be considered as attorney work), or it could mean that the attorney was Bates stamping or lettering the exhibits (which would be a non-billable clerical task).[3] This is why it is important for every legal bill entry to provide a “sufficient explanation” of what specifically is being done.[4]

Another red flagissue raised by billing for 8 to 10 hours (or in reality, for a 12 to 15-hour work day) is that it could be a sign that the attorney has taken on too much work.  In addition to laying off support staff to increase their profits, many law firms have also laid off marginally productive attorneys as well. So, it could well be that an attorney has taken on the work of departed attorneys forcing the attorney to cram all of his work into long work days.

But for whatever the cause or reason, working long work days on routine matters is not an efficient way to work and could likely lead to mistakes.  For even if an attorney is actually working a 12-hour day (to able to generate 8 hours worth of billing time), do you really think the attorney is doing his best work on a matter at 8:30 p.m. at the end of a very long work day?  Thus, if you encounter an attorney billing for 8 to 10 hours a day on a regular basis, it might be time to have a heart-to-heart talk with the attorney or consider whether your matter needs to be transferred to another attorney.

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[1] See, e.g., Ramos v. Lamm, 713 S.2d 546 (10th Cir. 1983)(Court agreed with studies that show that normally there are “six to seven billable hours per day for a five day week.  . . . The court should question reported time significantly in excess of the norm.”).

[2] See ALM LAW.com, Jan. 22, 2009 (reporting on support staff cuts at Ice Miller, “Ice Miller is hardly the only firm trimming support staff in recent months.  Last week, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld slashed 65 support staff positions across its U.S. offices, and Dechert, Reed Smith and White & Case are among the law firms that have cut a significant number of staffers in recent months.”).

[3] See Ceres Envtl. Servs. v. Colonel McCrary Trucking, LLC, No. 11-12787, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 8271, at *11 (11th Cir. Apr. 25, 2012)(court finding “purely clerical tasks” such tasks as “bates labeling of documents”).

[4] I devote a chapter to the importance of sufficiently explained legal bill entries in my book, How to Review Legal Bills Like a Pro.