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THIS IS NOT A SERIOUS ARTICLE. IT IS A PISS-TAKE ON THE CURRENT IMPERATIVE TO DITCH THE BILLABLE UNIT
Attorneys-General may be asked to implement uniform national legislation to ban hypocritical, alarmist or grandstanding calls to stop time charging by lawyers. The proposed legislation is expected to attack three main serial offenders.
Part 1 – Judges
Judges, overwhelmingly ex-barristers, waft to the bench after all their productive working years exploiting the most offending time charging rate – charging per day.
“The perception is that judges are able to pontificate as a judge only after years of outrageously over-charging regardless of quality of their services. They are protected from liability for their own incompetence, unlike solicitors who also have to run a business of many employees and are fully exposed to liability for everything they do, down to quality of Christmas card they send and charge for” said an unnamed source.
In some cases, barristers charge per year – requiring a fixed annual retainer not to act against the client. Barristers time charging not to provide services escapes the attention of judges.
“The alarming inconsistency of judges calling for the end of time charging by solicitors lowers respect for the judicial system. The public see this as naked hypocrisy,” said the source “with no hiding the flabby bits”.
Penalties for repeated egregious offences by judges are expected to include disgorgement of all prior remuneration earned by the judge by time charging.
Part 2 – General Counsel
In a move to enhance national productivity, general counsel are expected to become subject to a new rule that for three years after their first appointment they must not make any announcement on requiring clients to offer alternative fee or service arrangements.
“The problem,” sighed the unnamable source “is that newly appointed GCs have no management experience and think their priority is to get value by reducing legal costs, instead of getting value by managing legal risk. They breach their professional duties to their client by forcing substandard services under the guise of better budget performance of a cost centre. It’s called the Dumbing Down Dividend.”
After all, newly admitted solicitors cannot get an unrestricted certificate for three years, so newly appointed GCs with managerial responsibilities need time in the driving seat before they are allowed to make important management decisions and say anything in public. Lawyers have to respond to such facile, ill-considered and incompetent management demands by wasting large amounts of fruitless time discussing and pitching with alternative arrangements that are designed to mask cost shifting.
“All that wasted time has to be made up some how, so the GC’s client ends up paying for the decreased productivity from the managerially-challenged GC.”
The new laws require new GC s to prove competency based on copious amounts of freely available material on arrangements that have been around in the USA and UK for over 20 years. The Country Women’s Association will be accredited to test the GCs under a new “no nonsense” rule.
Part 3 – Parachuting Parvenus
Partners who parachute out of big firms and appear in boutiques are expected to be prevented from making silly statements about how they moved in order to have new flexible and cheaper billing arrangements for their clients.
They were happy to extort their clients in the good times, the phlegmatic source claimed. They leave because they are pushed out, lose the capacity to feed a team or they want a bigger return from their stellar services. Suddenly, they show in media releases their deep respect for reducing billing to their poached clients.
“Somehow they decide only in tougher times when they are not in a big firm that their poached clients should be billed less than in the good times, despite the same work being done,” mused the source, coughing relentlessly into a blood soaked rag.
The proposed national laws would have a prescribed list of phrases that must not be used such as:
- “cheaper for our clients”;
- “lower cost overheads”;
- “flexibility”;
- “better work life balance”; or
- “our clients came with us because they prefer our alternative fee and service arrangements that I could not offer at the big firm yet I was happy to stay there for the first [8 to 20] years of my professional career earning high remuneration off the very system that I am now criticising”.
Repeat offenders with no shame could be sentenced to attend ethics classes with Year 5 students.
The source is not expected to live to see the rules implemented.
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