When a company, agency or department of any size begins to have ongoing legal bills, which is often a part of doing business, there are two basic options for representation. One is to hire in-house attorneys that work for you as employees, representing you and your business in legal transactions. The other is to work with an outside legal firm or firms, paying them only for the services they provide. If you use the first option you have control of the budget, but with the second option you may want to have a legal fee audit completed.
For most large companies, even with in-house legal representation, hiring outside counsel becomes a necessity with different types of cases and service requirements. Doing a legal fee audit of your invoices from the outside counsel is not at all inappropriate and, in fact, may end up streamlining their business practice and helping you to form a stronger working relationship.
Possible Issues Highlighted with a Legal Fee Audit
It may seem fairly straightforward that legal fees are billed by the hour or fraction thereof at a set rate and for a set level of expertise. In other words you would reasonably expect to pay more if your attorney is reviewing documents or researching information than if a paralegal or clerical staff were doing the same task.
Correct Rate for the Work
While the billing per time is going to be clear through the legal fee audit, gray areas can and do exist. For example, your file may be handled by multiple people in the office and perhaps the attorney is doing work that could easy be handled by the paralegal, at a much lower rate. This is in inefficient use of the attorney’s time on your case and also a much higher charge to you on your bill.
Rounding Issues
In all legal matters your attorney will charge, if you are paying an hourly rate, by the complete hour as well as fractions of hours. This fraction of an hour could be one twelfth (every 5 minutes) or one quarter (every 15 minutes) or another fraction depending on their fee agreement. This can actually have a big impact on a bill over time. If an attorney spends 3 minutes on a phone call the difference between billing between for a 5 minute or a 15 minute period can be substantial.
If you have ongoing legal issues or are currently using outside legal counsel a legal fee audit can be very helpful indeed. Hiring a professional allows you to verify the services you are paying for are necessary and correct.
Our professionals can complete a legal fee audit to ensure that you are being billed fairly for the services provided.
