Lawyer Billing Practices

Here's an interesting news report:

Think of an ethical billing dilemma in these terms:

A lawyer is on an eight-hour flight from Tampa to Seattle. The lawyer's client has agreed to pay for business travel. In flight, the lawyer reviews the file of another client and drafts several letters, which takes four hours.

Can the lawyer bill the first client for the eight-hour flight time and the second client for the four hours of case work?

The American Bar Association released an opinion in 1993 that said lawyers should never bill for hours that were not worked. Therefore, it would be unethical to bill for travel time and for work performed during that travel time.

A recent anonymous survey of 251 lawyers from across the country, however, shows that 46.6 percent of lawyers see nothing unethical about it. Of those lawyers who thought this was OK, nearly half said there was no need to tell the client about the practice, which many experts say is the real ethical problem.

PB.com has addressed this issue before, noting that:

Some stuff strikes me as clearly unethical

• Charging time you didn't actually spend on a matter (duh).
• Double billing: You're on a plane flying to meet a client, so you charge travel time, while working on another matter and charging another client for the same time.

But other stuff strikes me as arguably more unsavory than unethical:

• "But for" billing: But for the stupid client, I wouldn't be getting up at 4 AM to catch a flight, so I'm billing time from the moment my feet hit the bedroom floor (or leave the house).
• Strategic phone/email practices: When I was in practice, we billed in quarter-hour blocks. This let you pile up your phone messages. You'd set aside an hour, say at 4 PM, to return all the day's calls. Call Client A. "Is he there?" "No." "Tell him I called." That could be billed as 15 minutes. Repeat for the next hour. If you had enough phone emssages, you could clock several hours billable time during an hour or so of real time. Today, most firms bill in 5 or 6 minute blocks, so it wouldn't work as well. On the other hand, you could try the same thing with email.
• Recycling memos: You wrote a memo to Client A on some topic. You spent 100 hours researching and writing the memo, for which you charged Client A in full. Client B later asks for advice on the same topic. You send Client B essentially the same memo and charge it for 100 hours of work, even though you just changed the names. (According to Downey, the ABA regards this as unethical and maybe even illegal.)
• Billing time for billing: Charging the client for time spent preparing the bill. Ethical?
• Not stopping the clock when taking a coffee or potty break.

Some stuff strikes me as clearly unethical

• Charging time you didn't actually spend on a matter (duh).
• Double billing: You're on a plane flying to meet a client, so you charge travel time, while working on another matter and charging another client for the same time.

But other stuff strikes me as arguably more unsavory than unethical:

• "But for" billing: But for the stupid client, I wouldn't be getting up at 4 AM to catch a flight, so I'm billing time from the moment my feet hit the bedroom floor (or leave the house).
• Strategic phone/email practices: When I was in practice, we billed in quarter-hour blocks. This let you pile up your phone messages. You'd set aside an hour, say at 4 PM, to return all the day's calls. Call Client A. "Is he there?" "No." "Tell him I called." That could be billed as 15 minutes. Repeat for the next hour. If you had enough phone emssages, you could clock several hours billable time during an hour or so of real time. Today, most firms bill in 5 or 6 minute blocks, so it wouldn't work as well. On the other hand, you could try the same thing with email.
• Recycling memos: You wrote a memo to Client A on some topic. You spent 100 hours researching and writing the memo, for which you charged Client A in full. Client B later asks for advice on the same topic. You send Client B essentially the same memo and charge it for 100 hours of work, even though you just changed the names. (According to Downey, the ABA regards this as unethical and maybe even illegal.)
• Billing time for billing: Charging the client for time spent preparing the bill. Ethical?
• Not stopping the clock when taking a coffee or potty break.

Some stuff strikes me as clearly unethical

• Charging time you didn't actually spend on a matter (duh).
• Double billing: You're on a plane flying to meet a client, so you charge travel time, while working on another matter and charging another client for the same time.

But other stuff strikes me as arguably more unsavory than unethical:

• "But for" billing: But for the stupid client, I wouldn't be getting up at 4 AM to catch a flight, so I'm billing time from the moment my feet hit the bedroom floor (or leave the house).
• Strategic phone/email practices: When I was in practice, we billed in quarter-hour blocks. This let you pile up your phone messages. You'd set aside an hour, say at 4 PM, to return all the day's calls. Call Client A. "Is he there?" "No." "Tell him I called." That could be billed as 15 minutes. Repeat for the next hour. If you had enough phone emssages, you could clock several hours billable time during an hour or so of real time. Today, most firms bill in 5 or 6 minute blocks, so it wouldn't work as well. On the other hand, you could try the same thing with email.
• Recycling memos: You wrote a memo to Client A on some topic. You spent 100 hours researching and writing the memo, for which you charged Client A in full. Client B later asks for advice on the same topic. You send Client B essentially the same memo and charge it for 100 hours of work, even though you just changed the names. (According to Downey, the ABA regards this as unethical and maybe even illegal.)
• Billing time for billing: Charging the client for time spent preparing the bill. Ethical?
• Not stopping the clock when taking a coffee or potty break.