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62 Def. Counsel J. 583 (1995)
How Times Have Changed: A Systematic Approach to Billing

handle is hein.journals/defcon62 and id is 585 raw text is: How Times Have Changed: A Systematic Approach to Billing No more flying by the seat of your pants when you bill clients. Now bills must be detailed, and supervising attorneys must be vigilant By BRAD MALAMUD ONCE upon a time, when a law firm resolved a matter and concluded its representation, it sim- ply mailed the client a bill, which usually con- sisted of an amount preceded by a one-line de- scription: For Services Rendered. But today, in all but a few instances, law firms prepare elaborate bills periodically during representa- tion, often monthly or quarterly, providing de- tailed descriptions of all services. The current billing procedure used by most law firms at their client's request is simple enough to summarize. Each biller records the time expended for a given task along with a description of the services rendered. Once a month, these billing entries are gathered, and internal pre-bills are printed. A supervising at- torney reviews them, editing descriptions and time charged. Some supervising attorneys take this step seriously and perform a detailed re- view of fee and cost billing. Others simply send the bill to the client unaltered, thereby poten- tially breaching the duty imposed by the first sentence of Rule 1.5(a) of the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Con- duct: A lawyer's fee shall be reasonable. Lawyers and law firms can avoid the litiga- tion and notoriety that arises from billing dis- putes by carefully describing the hours ex- pended and costs incurred on the client's be- half. Failure to record time accurately and to describe the work performed sometimes causes a client to lose confidence and occasionally en- genders continuing disputes. CLIENT COMPLAINTS Clients voice concern over fees and costs that appear excessive, unreasonable, duplica- tive or unnecessary. When a concern arises, cli- ents usually request the supervising attorney (and possibly other billers who worked on the file) to justify the work and expenses. Many client complaints associated with perceived overbilling can be eliminated if attorneys fol- Brad Malamud is president of Legal Cost Consultants Inc. of Los Angeles, which advises companies and individuals with respect to legal cost containment. He is a graduate of the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley (B.S. 1974), Hastings College of the Law (J.D. 1977) and New York University School of Law (LLM. 1979). His practice is limited to auditing and litigating fee disputes between insurers and in- dependent or panel counsel. low the suggestions below, but this article does not address instances of improper case manage- ment and overstaffing, which are common causes of overbilling. Clients often are frustrated by billing state- ments from which they can neither determine what work was performed nor why it was justi- fied. This frustration most frequently occurs when a biller: * Provides inadequate billing descriptions; Uses minimum billing increments (for in- stance, quarter hours) that overstate the actual time expended; * Pads time (bills time greater than the time actually expended); * Stacks repetitive, non-descriptive billing entries; * Repeatedly employs identical billing de- scriptions without identifying any specific work performed; 0 Bills for work that should fall within his or her expertise (evident when a client is billed for the training of junior attorneys or paralegals); or * Duplicates the effort of another biller. What philosophy should the supervising at- torney employ to eliminate billing problems? SOLUTION Is SIPLE The goal of every biller should be to con- form descriptions of services rendered to the standard established in California for so-called Cumis independent counsel in Center Founda-

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