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October 16, 2008I understand that other lawyers can charge their time. I’m talking about a lawyer that advertises as an individual and who has employees that would call, email, meet with the lawyer and one another then charging the client for each of their time. ONE LAWYER HIGHERED, NOT TALKING ABOUT A FIRM. A single lawyer’s office.
So, what’s going on? What is the terminology for what they are doing?
Not the first time dealing in lawyer…this one charged approx. $150,000 for 3 months of “work”.
Not first time working WITH lawyers…sorry. Others had paralegals and not charged FULL amount lawyers fees.
Horaayy..there are 3 comment(s) for me so far ;)
A legal practice. I certainly hope your lawyer doesn’t do his own research, typing, faxing, photocopying and filing.
You show me “one lawyer” who doesn’t work with at least one or two people in his office I will keel over dead.
Your case - “his” time — that includes his people’s time. You don’t get 6 hours of research done by a paralegal for free, if there are two of them working on your case at the same time then you will be charged for both of them. It’s a billable hour because work has been done on your case.
That’s completely proper, and even standard in most states.
The proper terminology is called “hourly billing”.
It’s like if you hire a carpenter, and the carpenter has two assistants. If all three spend an hour working on a project, then you pay the hourly rate for each of them.
It’s no different with any other profession. When you have surgery, you pay for the doctor, any other doctors who are assisting, and for any nurses, anesthesiologists or other professionals who are working during that time on your behalf.
Or when you are at work, do you not expect to get paid when you are at a meeting? Just because your superior is there, does that mean you should get paid for your time?
When a lawyer uses subordinates in a practice, they are doing it to save you money. If the lawyer didn’t have a secretary or paralegal or investigator doing part of the work, then you would have to pay the lawyer to do it all. And the secretary or paralegal or investigator is being billed at a much lower hourly rate than the attorney would be paid.