Why Lawyer Jokes?

[Gary Sisco]

I'd have followed the link to WSJ but it requires too many hoops for me to jump through to read it online. I followed the link to the below from Sullivan's site:

WSJ: 55% of Lawyers Pad Bills; 35% Double Bill
Interesting post on the WSJ Law Blog: Study Suggests Significant Billing Abuse:

There’s a whole lot of bill padding going on ─ according to a just-completed billing survey (link unavailable) by William G. Ross, a professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law who specializes in billing ethics. Ross polled 5,000 attorneys from various walks of life throughout the country, and 251 responded. He worked with Reed Business Information to generate a random sampling of lawyers who work at law firms. Two-thirds said they had “specific knowledge” of bill padding ─ a finding virtually identical to one reached by Ross in a 1995 billing survey. Also, 54.6% of the respondents (as compared with 40.3% in 1995) admitted that they had sometimes performed unnecessary tasks just to bump up their billable output. Ross says that bill padding involves invoicing a client for work never performed — or exaggerating the amount of time spent on a matter—- while unnecessary work is that which “exceeds any marginal utility” to a client. ...

And then there is the matter of “double billing,” an oft-debated topic. Here’s the issue: A New York lawyer travels to Pittsburgh to attend a hearing for Client A, billing the client for her travel time. But on the plane she also bills Client B for reviewing a brief in B’s case. Courts, academics, and the American Bar Association, Ross says, almost uniformly frown on doubling billing. But the percentage of attorneys who admitted that they had double billed rose from 23% in 1996 to 34.7% in 2007. And only 51.8% regarded the practice as unethical in 2007, as compared with 64.7% in 1995.

***********

It ain't just lawyers, either, though many follow another practice I find just as rude: Charging an attorney's hourly rate for work done by an employee at a fraction of the charge.

Bronwyn's homehealth agency, we discovered some months ago, charged Medicare, as a matter of policy, two hours for any nursing visit, however short. If a nurse was here ten minutes, they charged for two hours. If here for one hour, they charged for two. And etc. One day when an aid set out to do an errand for Bronwyn (perfectly legal Medicare service charge for assistance), the Big Nurse, whom I loathe, asked her, "Do you know what Medicare fraud means?" The aid replied, "Charging two hours for nursing visits?" End of discussion.

Doctors do it routinely, too. Medicare auditors have found many who've billed for more than 24 hours per day!

It's supposed to be billed in 15 minute increments.

[claude]

Over-billing ha!! I'd just like to get paid for all of the hours I put in to a client's file.

[Dr Dave]

Once upon a time I was an industrial marketing consultant, specializing in the food and beverage packaging business. I billed my time by the quarter-hour. I'm not going to name the company, because it is still around. Let me just say that the practices you describe are not limited to the legal and medical professions.

[Gary Sisco]

I don't imagine they are, Doc.

I do actually, after all these years, still get amazed at how much just plain dishonesty prevails in daily life.

When the construction was being done on our house, we got a bill every two weeks from the contractor, that would include a whole stack of receipts for literally everything they'd bought since the last bill. Every two weeks, we'd find ourselves being billed for piddling stuff that was their own expense (the rule being if it stays, we pays; if it don't, we don't) but it would amount to forty or fifty bucks every time, sometimes more. Incredibly, their bookkeeper (who I'd known in school) said we were the only ones who'd ever actually gone through and checked the receipts each time. Once we showed up, as we often did, close to quitting time, with some beer for the guys. It helps build loyalty in these parts. It's also expected so not showing up with beer has the opposite effect. Anyway, one day we arrive and there's a kid standing on the dumpster playing air guitar to some kind of classic schlock on the boom box. Bronwyn asks the site boss if she was being charged $18/hr for the kid's labor. Yep. She tore the guy a new asshole about paying $18/hour for someone to play air guitar, and got him busy policing the job site faster than he'd have jumped if Sgt Wilson climbed on his ass in boot camp. People after that were always talking about "I've never seen such a neat construction area before ...." Even still, at the end of the project, there was a lot of things -- boxes of nails and screws and so on -- in the garage, leftover from the job. Site boss asks, You want me to take this stuff with us? I asked, Did we pay for it? Yep, he says. Well, then, ahem.

[Gary Sisco]

The last one I had, I went to this guy we'd used when Bronwyn first got her insurance settlement, to have him draw up a trust to protect my mom from the IRS because the old man had lung cancer. So we have this whole conversation in his office, get all the details down, and then ... nothing. He'd been told, by me, that the old man likely had very little time left. After the old man had died, I finally get the papers "to look over" -- months after the meeting. Following that was a bill for more than $600. I purposefully sat on the bill for six or seven months before paying it and when I did, I included a letter telling him that while I was paying the bill, I was doing so while deeply insulted because he'd managed to do nothing at all, in the end, and yet expected to be paid anyway. I was just about as insulted as I've ever been. Motherfucker never said a word of apology or anything at all, actually, even though we'd paid him thousands of dollars over the years. $600 for nothing. Fill in the blanks boilerplate for a dead guy, so utterly meaningless.

But these are the ways people end up in tailored shirts and suits. If I ever see the mofo again, his pressed shirts will be abruptly rumpled and ragged.

[julieswi]

Originally Posted by tippy

I would have asked about a reduction. If I didn't get the trust I'd wanted or was hurt by the delay then I would have paid nothing.

dont pay them, then when they take you to court, offer them $5/month!

[Gary Sisco]

I was more than tempted but you never know what's going to come up in future and Vermont is a small world. Of course, that smallness works both ways. I could have dead-beated him with total justification, from my point of view, but he could then have also alerted his friends in other practices about the non-payment (without of course saying anything that might have incriminated himself....).

I think paying it along with the sharp letter made the point a lot more clearly and undeniably. It left him with nothing to justify his own behavior.

[Gary Sisco]

Originally Posted by julieswi

dont pay them, then when they take you to court, offer them $5/month!

I did something close to that with a hospital -- kidney stone. Two hours in the place. Almost five large in bills. The doc made the diagnosis in about 25 seconds. I did pay it off eventually but I took my bloody sweet time about it, despite the constant harassment letters and one phone call (I don't think that guy will ever call again for any reason).

[Gary Sisco]

One good thing about going broke with the farm is that I think this will very likely be the last year we have to pay an accounting firm to do the tax work. A 1040 will do the trick after this year, I'm pretty sure. Those mofos don't come cheap, either, but I'd always rather pay someone other than the various gummints. If nothing else, at least I can expect the wastage to be wasted on something fun, anyway, more than likely.

[Dan G]

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

Let me just say that the practices you describe are not limited to the legal and medical professions.

Plumbers here charge between $65 and $75 to come to the house, and then $130 hr with a minimum billing of 1/2 hr. Last one I had was there for 15 minutes - cost $130. Told me the next job was on the same block, probably the same amount of time. So two visit charges and 2 minimums in less than 30 mins.

[julieswi]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

I did something close to that with a hospital -- kidney stone. Two hours in the place. Almost five large in bills. The doc made the diagnosis in about 25 seconds. I did pay it off eventually but I took my bloody sweet time about it, despite the constant harassment letters and one phone call (I don't think that guy will ever call again for any reason).

25 years ago i worked for a collection agency, answering phones. The collectors there said that when you dont pay a hospital, or doctor bill it will not affect your credit ratings, not sure if thats the case today though. I always say, as long as you pay something your credit wont be affected.

[Gary Sisco]

You could have done it yourself, on the other hand.

There's a *reason* I pay plumbers to do that, er, shit.

Guys who actually do things one can see in the world, I don't have a problem paying. Plumbers, mechanics, heavy machinery guys, no problem. Whole lot of people complain about a good wrench's bill, but on the other hand there are a whole lot of people who can't fix their own car, so there it is.

[Gary Sisco]

Originally Posted by julieswi

25 years ago i worked for a collection agency, answering phones. The collectors there said that when you dont pay a hospital, or doctor bill it will not affect your credit ratings, not sure if thats the case today though. I always say, as long as you pay something your credit wont be affected.

If it had been a collection agency I'd have just laughed and hung up. It would've cost them more to do anything than I owed in the first place. I laughed at them for years about my student loans. I was so broke I couldn't have paid them off even I wanted to, and the interest was mounting so that I'd have been better off going to see Tony Soprano for a loan, in the end. My folks ended up paying it off without telling me, and against my will. They were a lot more worried about it than I was. I paid them back eventually.

[Gary Sisco]

Originally Posted by tippy

Hey I can not pay my phone or electric bills for 2 months in a row and it doesn't affect my credit rating. It seems the only one who can affect your credit rating is the Banks. Maybe that's not so though. Seriously, people with money put off paying others for as long as possible - that's the way it looks to me.

People don't get a lot of money by parting with it, Tip, yo.

[julieswi]

my brother in law, dentist, loves to tell me on a regular basis, that he has money because he doesnt spend it!

[Gary Sisco]

That's another I can (almost) understand the billing rates. If I had to look into other people's mouths all week, I'd be charging heavy, too.

[Gary Sisco]

True. We have to make our choices.

My retirement plan for many years was to move to a good, dry place under the Burnside Bridge in Portland, OR, but all the good spots are long taken, now.

[GoodSpeak]

Originally Posted by Dan G

Plumbers here charge between $65 and $75 to come to the house, and then $130 hr with a minimum billing of 1/2 hr. Last one I had was there for 15 minutes - cost $130. Told me the next job was on the same block, probably the same amount of time. So two visit charges and 2 minimums in less than 30 mins.

That's a fact, too.

We just had the plumber out two weeks ago to fix a leak in our kitchen.


Wasn't here twenty minutes: $70 bucks to replace a five cent part.

[Gary Sisco]

So why didn't you just replace it yourself?

[jesus marion joseph]

So this lawyer calls a plumber to fix a problem he has with his kitchen sink. The plumber looks at it and says "I can fix it, but I'm gona hafta' bill you $200 per hour." The lawyer, horrified, says "Hey, I'm a lawyer and I only charge $150 per hour!" The plumber says "Really? When I was a lawyer I only charged $100 per hour."


Rimshot.


Part of my practice is assigned indigent criminal cases, for which I bill the commonwealth through an online billing system. It's set up to round everything off to the quarter hour, which is fine by me, since they pay a fairly low (relative to what gets charged to a private-pay client) hourly rate. Thus, a two minute phone call becomes a fifteen minute phone call, no matter what.

[Clay Fink]

Doctor and woman in Dr's office.

Doctor - "I have great news. You're pregnant!!!"

Woman - Starts to sob, looks confused.

Doctor - "What's wrong?"

Woman - Still sobbing. : "That's impossible, doctor".

Doctor - "Why?"

Woman - "My husband and I only have anal sex".

Doctor - "Oh! Didn't you know? That's where lawyers come from."

[Gary Sisco]

Good ones.

[jesus marion joseph]

Just in case everyone thinks it's all sunshine and seashells in the legal world, I present the following:

Supreme Court rules against 2-time killer on Arizona death row
By Associated Press
Monday, May 14, 2007 - Updated: 10:25 AM EST

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled against a death row inmate Monday who directed his lawyer not to present evidence that could spare him, then argued on appeal that the attorney was ineffective.

The court reversed a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision granting twice-convicted killer Jeffrey Landrigan a hearing on his claim that his lawyer didn’t do enough to ward off the death sentence.

The appeals court should have deferred to lower court rulings against Landrigan, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in a 5-4 decision.

Landrigan, sentenced to death in Arizona in 1990, argued to the court that he didn’t get a chance to present evidence about his tormented childhood that could have changed the outcome of his sentence.

Landrigan made it clear at trial that he didn’t want his lawyer to introduce the evidence.

Landrigan escaped from an Oklahoma prison in 1989, where he was serving prison terms for a 1982 murder and a 1986 prison stabbing. After a night of drinking beer in Phoenix a month later, Landrigan killed Chester Dyer by stabbing him and strangling him with an electrical cord.

At his sentencing hearing, Landrigan repeatedly interrupted his lawyer’s efforts to present evidence that showed him in a more positive light. He finally told the judge that there weren’t any mitigating circumstances to share.

Afterward, however, Landrigan argued that if his lawyer had explained better, he would have agreed to present evidence that he suffered because of fetal alcohol syndrome and a history of violence in his biological family. Landrigan’s father had been on death row in Arkansas until he died of natural causes in 2005.

The Arizona Supreme Court, a federal district judge and a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit all rejected Landrigan’s argument. But the full appeals court reversed, saying Landrigan was entitled to a hearing on his claim that his lawyer was ineffective.

[Gary Sisco]

I was once acquitted against my will, after a civil disobedience demonstration. The legal team came up with a necessity defense claiming that we'd done what we'd one (occupy a senator's office) to prevent a greater harm (dead El Salvadorans). That wasn't the reason I did it -- I just wanted him to pay a price for refusing to meet and talk with his constituents about the war and its funding and so forth. The judge said we'd have to be tried as a group. I told her I didn't accept that defense and that I was firing the lawyers and in fact had never hired them or agreed to be represented by them, either. She told me, tough, essentially. So I told her, Well, do what you like but I don't consider them my attorneys and they aren't representing me. I have a right to choose my own. She wouldn't hear it. So I told her, Well, do what you want but you can contact me in Jalapa, Nicaragua, which is where I'll be by the time the trial comes up.

The jury acquitted the bunch of us. I wasn't present. My mother told me about it when I called over the holidays that year.

[jesus marion joseph]

Acquitted in absentia. Only in America.

[Gary Sisco]

I thought so. Not only in absentia but against my expressed-in-court will, after having been represented by attorneys I told the court did not represent me nor had I ever asked them to.

Only in America, for sure.

That has to be some kind of first.

[jesus marion joseph]

Would have made for an interesting appeal!

[Gary Sisco]

Really. I was infuriated at the time that I was being forced to be represented by lawyers I hadn't asked to represent me, had rejected in court, and so forth.

http://www.vtbar.org/Upload%20Files/...ions/notes.htm

"In the case known as the Trial of the Winooski 44, the necessity defense was successfully invoked by protesters who had refused to leave Senator Stafford’s office until he agreed to hold a public discussion about the government’s involvement with the war in Nicaragua. The case is official known as State v. Keller et al., No. 1372-4-84 CnCr. Judge Frank Mahady instructed the jury that the State bore the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the necessity did not exist or apply. See the book Por Amor Al Pueblo: Not Guilty! (Front Porch Publishing 1986). Also see the article by Linda Vance, Esq., “The Necessity Defense in Political Trials: An Appraisal,” which appeared in The Vermont Bar Journal & Law Digest, Vol. 12, No. 2, April 1986."

****************

These here legal researchers didn't do their research very well, though, as the issue at hand was the war in El Salvador. Vulcan gatling guns being used in the air war against guerrillas and peasants in El Salvador were (are) made in Burlington, in those days by GE and since then by a string of "defense" contractors I haven't kept track of. It's changed hands so many times the no-trespassing signs still say "GE" on them decades later. Senator Stafford had refused numerous requests for a public meeting with him to discuss his voting support for the war. After a series of refusals, there was a takeover of his office in Winooski, a town just outside Burlington, that lasted for four or five days until they finally cuffed the 44 that wouldn't leave when ordered. There had been many more in the actual occupation. Actually me and Citizen Nick Velvet were arrested against our will, also, as we weren't interested in getting cuffed on purpose and were acting only as legal witnesses (of police behavior) for those arrested. We were cuffed anyway or it would have been the Winooski 42.

A google search on "Winooski 44" turns up other hits.

There's a book that has trial transcripts and a legal brief on the use of the necessity defense. I still think it was a bogus defense, really. It certainly wasn't my defense. My defense would have been only that I was acting as a citizen of good conscience of a (relatively) democratic republic, period.

The lawyers were all good people, and movement people, don't get me wrong. I just didn't want to be tried using that defense. Or any. I always pled no contest so I could have my chance to speak up for myself in court. I've never felt a reason to plead not guilty to something I'd clearly done, and on purpose, at that.