Double billing is when attorneys bill two or more clients for work done during the same time period, which is prohibited by the American Bar Association. It is difficult to control as billing records are confidential. Lawyers are under pressure to bill clients for at least 2,000 hours a year, and some bill 5,000 hours or more. Double billing takes many forms, including billing clients for time not spent on their case or billing multiple clients for the same work. Some lawyers argue that they should be compensated for time spent working, but the two clients should be billed for 50% of that time. The profession may need to develop a way of billing for the value of work, rather than hours worked, to avoid ethical dilemmas.
Double billing is the unethical practice, employed by some attorneys, of billing two or more clients in full for work performed during a single time period. Prohibited by the American Bar Association in the United States, the practice is difficult to control because attorneys’ billing records are confidential and clients, once billed for time, usually have no way of knowing whether another client has been billed for the same time. There are many variations on the subject, which pose ethical problems for lawyers.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “A lawyer’s time is his business,” and the modern legal profession in the United States agrees, billing clients primarily by the hour, often in increments of as little as five minutes. Lawyers in firms are usually under pressure to bill their clients for at least 2,000 hours a year, which equates to about 40 a week, but it is not unusual for 5,000 hours or more to be billed annually by an individual lawyer, reflecting a year of 100-hour weeks. Workweeks like this sometimes happen, but the little research that exists on the subject suggests that many of those attorneys worked far fewer hours and tallied those hours billing with double-billed clients.
Double billing takes many forms. Ideally, when an attorney works on an issue for a client, that client is billed for the actual time worked. If a lawyer bills a client for time not spent on his case, that is outright fraud. The dilemma occurs between the two; for example, when a lawyer is working on a matter that affects more than a single client. That is, if the attorney spends half an hour researching a topic relevant to the cases of two separate clients, billing each client for half an hour at the regular hourly rate is double billing, justified by the billing attorney with the argument that each client received the benefit of a half hour of research. At the end of the day, though, the double-billing attorney ends up billing more hours than actually worked. Other attorneys, however, argue that while they should be compensated for time spent working, the two clients should be billed for 50% of that time.
There are other variations on the concept of double billing. For example, if an attorney is traveling to a destination on behalf of a client, it is perfectly acceptable for the cost of travel, such as airline tickets, to be charged to the client, as well as a reasonable cost for the actual time spent on the road. It is not uncommon, however, for an attorney on such a trip for one client to perform work for another and charge that client the normal fee. Many lawyers would argue that it is acceptable to do so, especially if the rate they charge for travel is lower than the rate they charge for office time, since travel does not employ the same skills required for research, writing or court litigation.
Some of the work attorneys do for clients is billed on a flat-rate basis, such as real estate transactions, simple preparations, and other routine tasks. Some have proposed that the profession develop a way of billing for the value of work, rather than hours worked, so that if more clients benefit from work done in a block of a lawyer’s time, there would be standards for billing clients for that value. which would not violate ethical standards. While a crude analogy, the auto industry developed its flat rate book to avoid problems with the same job costing such different amounts for different situations; such an approach would alleviate the ethical dilemma many attorneys face whenever filing a billing statement.
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