In determining what is reasonable in charging for the giving of second opinions, much will depend on the status and rate of the original practitioner. This is the more usual situation, although there can be a fine line between what constitutes supervision and actually doing the work. Often such charges can be made into issues of credit and fundamentally affect the approach to other of the more conventional charges made by the practitioner. It would seem unfair to require that time be written off as an assurance that time charging had been properly controlled. However, there are instances where alarm bells should ring.
Common instances are inexperienced staff running up huge amounts of time on areas such as research.
Such research should be overseen to ensure it is value for money and not a rehashing of established law. The absence within the firm of any benchmarks or procedures for systematic quality control of the time charging system was another basis for error. There was no auditing of the time charging system, either internal or external. He also noted with approval American approaches to ensure consistency and quality control in time charging. Certainly problems can arise when a staff member appears slow generally, or takes a fixed view on how much should be charged.