Lerman cites a 1991 survey in which 51 percent of the lawyers who responded admitted occasionally padding bills. Interestingly, the lawyers polled universally believed other attorneys committed the offense more often than they themselves did, Lerman says. Pressure to bill The long-entrenched system of quantifying a lawyer's worth by the sweep of the minute hand drives the overbilling problem. And while the volume of legal work going to a firm may stagnate, the pressure on associates to bill up to 2,000 hours per year remains. That tension increases the motivation to overbill.
Most law firms have an annual target .
She's careful to note, however, that the wide variation in firm cultures plays a strong part in whether overbilling takes place at a particular partnership. The new legal auditors complement a service that has been offered by the Maryland State Bar Association since 1968. William G. Mitchell Jr., chair of the MSBA Committee on the Resolution of Fee Disputes, says the 92 volunteer attorneys in his service provide a forum for legal consumers who believe they've been overcharged. The service received roughly 1,500 complaints last year. Bosver attributes many unreasonably high fees to inefficiencies in time management, duplication of effort and inappropriate allocation of labor.