I used to belong to a particular practice section of my state bar association. I won’t give the real name of this practice section. I will only say that many of its members are attorneys in smaller communities who basically take on anything that walks in the door.
This practice section has a very active listerv that was a real hoot to follow as lawyers sometimes send out desperate pleas for help with a matter they know virtually nothing about. Those listserv postings invariably ended with the plea “does someone have a form that I could use?” Thus, my pet name for the practice section.
These listserv postings point out two facts of life in the legal profession. One is that lawyers often take on matters they probably have no business trying to handle. Two is that an awful lot of legal work is done using forms (or with recycled work product as I mentioned in my last post).
Forms are routinely used for appearances, initial and closing letters to clients, withdrawals, orders, etc. Even more substantive documents such as discovery documents can also be form documents.
Several years ago, I was reviewing an elaborate set of discovery documents that the lawyer had billed several hours to prepare. What made me suspect the documents were mostly recycled work product or form documents were the questions inquiring about the injured party’s occupation and military service. You see the discovery was being directed to determine the injuries of a small child who obviously did not have an occupation or had served in the military.
As was explained in a previous post on recycled work product, lawyers may only ethically bill for that time needed to amend the work product to make it suitable to use in another matter. Similarly, when filling out a form document, a lawyer can only ethically bill for the time it takes to fill out the blanks in the form document.
In a perfect world, if all attorneys would simply honor the ethics of their profession when it comes to billing a client for services, there would be no need for folks like me. But fortunately for folks like me, we do not live in a perfect world.
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