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Miscellaneous

: Overlawyered

Not Not Guilty Guilty!!

By Walter Olson, Ted Frank, and David Nieporent

Overlawyered reported last summer on William Ross's findings about the double billing of clients, and Ted opined on it at Point of Law.

Cameron Stracher's book (his second) entitled Double Billing: A Young Lawyer's Tale Of Greed, Sex, Lies, And The Pursuit Of A Swivel Chair is careful not to assert that there was double billing going on in his fictional New York white shoe law firm, but there was certainly plenty of churning, redundant/unnecessary work, etc., the ethics of which is comparably impugned by the principles behind the rule against double billing.

In light of Judge Matsch's repudiation of Big City trial counsel's conduct in the Medtronic Case, I got to thinking about unethical lawyer conduct, and asked myself this:

Aside from the obvious business remedy available to the client, does trial counsels' misconduct excuse the client from paying their bill (or enable them to recover the fees paid)? Does the answer to that depend on whether the client was complicit in the unethical strategy?

Full post as published by Overlawyered on February 27, 2008 (boomark / email).