From: Matt Muttley, Managing Partner
To: All fee earning staff
RE: FEES
My attention was drawn to a piece in the Financial Times today about the level of fees being charged at Allen & Overy:
“A High Court judge has blasted a top City of London law firm for charging nine years’ worth of man hours on a five-day trial over BlackBerry patents, in a judgment that will fuel the growing controversy over lawyers’ billing practices. Lawyers from Allen & Overy racked up nearly £5.2m in costs representing Research in Motion, the maker of the popular BlackBerry device, in a dispute with Visto, a US-based wireless technology company.”
The fee of £5.2m is not, of itself, eye watering – but there were, clearly, presentation issues. Please note the words of the judge in the case on this matter: “The picture summoned up by this bill of costs is one which is totally unfamiliar to anyone who has been involved in economically conducted patent litigation,” the judge said. In refusing to award Research in Motion its full costs, he said he was bound to prevent a party from recovering “unnecessary and unreasonable’’ expenses.”
Apparently, Mr Justice Floyd said he would expect the firm’s associates to be able to recite “all the documents in the case by heart” given the amount of time they claimed to have spent on the dispute. Eva Braun told me that The Evening Standard were also referring to A&O charging 9 man years of time for the five day case. It is important that we ‘leave no stone unturned in litigation.’
There are far too many people interfering now in the matter of solicitors’ fees. £600 per hour? Amateurs! Even Tim Dutton QC, Chairman of The Bar, has weighed in telling the FT that this should be read as a “warning sign” to solicitors about their billing practices. One expects clients to raise their eyebrows occasionally upon receipt of a fee note, but it really is the end when lawyers start talking to the hacks about matters like this.
At least no-one here has managed to bill 28 hours in a single day, as apparently happened across the pond. Have they / you?
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I’m with Allen & Ovaries here. Good lawyers should be paid their dues. So should bad ones.
And, in the interests of justice, a barrister’s fee note should always be paid. Ideally, twice.
Mr Geeklawyer: We had your clerk on the phone eighteen times this morning and twice this afternoon. He appears to be most assiduous in prosecuting the collection of fees and in the provision of statements at hourly intervals.
I notice that your clerk’s telephone number appears to be a Monaco number. Yet your email IP indicates that you appear to be in somewhere called Wolverhampton. I’ve just been told by The Foreign Office where Wolverhampton is.
You have my sympathy – but, look on the bright side…. negative equity may well take longer to hit Wolverhampton.
You may be sure that I shall lose no time at all in attending to your fee note.
Kind regards
per pro
Matt Muttley
Dear Mr Muttley/ Mr Geeklawyer,
One wonders if you will both, in the fullness of time amalgamate your respective business/practice in a sort of GIGANTIC Poly-Tesco-Law-Trust-Status-Mega-City Firm charging frankly SURREAL fees/extended refreshers under the name MuttleyGeek and Partners or GeekieMutt LLP or some such other amazing connotation.
The City awaits your decision with baited breath even as Allen and Ovaries decide to declare themselves immediately bankrupt in the face of such competition….
Speaking as one who just got paid for something I apparently did 10 years ago and have long forgotten but who is now supposed to pay tax on invoices rendered immediately notwithstanding when they get paid and when the Bar Council have said hourly rates are no way to run a modern business (without consulting me) and once got turned down for compulsory ie non-discretionary sip by a magistrate who exited left saying they get paid quite enough as it is …. argh a mini rant .. I am with the Judge if only because I don’t know how to get away with it in family case but am so honourable i have recently kicked myself out of two cases when i thought my contribution was hors de combat more rant ripping off clients does not pay in the long run. I gave up more remunerative commercial work when i saw the rip off in action on consultancy fees. I would add something about giving lawyers a bad name except that is scarcely credible.
Jacquig
Jacquig – good post!
Thanks…. nothing wrong with a mini rant 🙂