Over-Billing and Ethics, or How to Make it Stop

McAfee is suing its former counsel for over-billing its files - to the tune of $12 million:

""[WilmerHale] intentionally overworked and churned the representation of Goyal; shamelessly employing over 100 WilmerHale timekeepers in the feeding frenzy," McAfee alleged in a complaint filed in the Eastern District of Texas earlier this year. "Defendant's bills reflect at least 16 partners, 34 associate attorneys, 10 legal assistants and 49 staff personnel -- how else could they amass this enormous trove of cash?" the complaint read."

When you bill that many hours, with that many people - all at rates of $300, $400, even $800 an hour - you're bound to make clients angry. I have no idea if Wilmer Hale is guilty in this case, but I do know that "churning the file" is SOP at many large firms. "I don't care how you do it, just bill 2,000 hours a year" has been told to far too many associates for this not to be the case.

Large law firms are the dinosaurs of the legal world; if only there was an asteroid with their names on it coming down the pike! But as long as large clients pay the bills, there won't be any such thing - just business as usual, with partners doing everything they can to maximize their own profits at the expense of the legal profession's reputation.

On a personal level, an attorney at one of these firms might ask - what does this rotten system have to do with me? I'm just doing my job. I hope things change, but until then, I have work to do, a family to provide for, and I can't do anything about it. I would say, in response to that, once you let that worm of greed, of uncaring, into your soul, you will never be the same again. You lose your principles, your perspective, your very life.

As for not being able to do anything about this? Here is a quote from Jan de Hartog's The Peaceable Kingdom - it's a fictionalized history of the founding of the Quakers. Margaret Best (one of the original Quakers) is talking to her husband, Tom (a judge), about the deplorable fact that children are in prison, and how she is going to go into prison to care for those children:

"In a last effort to save her from herself he went toward her, took her by the shoulders and said, 'Look, dear heart, of course thou art right. I too am deeply distressed that the law imposes such an inhuman penalty on children... I am yearning for the day when this will no longer be necessary' ... 'Tom, love, doesn't thou see, that time is now ... the moment thy conscience tells thee something is wrong, that is the time to stop it.'"

If you don't participate in a broken and greed-fueled system, it will stop existing. If you do nothing, then nothing will change.