Are there statutes/agencies that regulate possible abuse of billing hours and if so, how effective are they?
I didn’t want to disclose this, but in the interest of “honesty” I will. Gahhh…I’m no better than a lawyer! 
Someone in my extended family has been and is currently in jail. The only details I know (from the publicly available court records) is that in each case, a Not Guilty plea has been entered, then changed to Guilty at a later date. In some cases, a jury has been requested, but it’s never gone that far.
I would think the first thing his lawyer would ask, would be “Give me the details of what happened?”, I would hope that next question would be “Did you do it?”. Again, to my strict sense of “honesty”, it’s a simple Yes or No question.
I understand it’s a song and dance between the two lawyers and the judge or between the lawyers, judge and jury, but for lawyer to plead “Not Guilty” when they (supposedly) know their client is not brings their “honesty” both legal and moral into question.
Knocks wood The only experience I’ve had before a judge (other than testifying for my friend) has been in traffic court. My vivid memory is people saying “Guilty, with an explanation” to which the judge would admonish the person, “Either you’re guilty or not!” Now, upon either a straight guilty or not guilty plea, the judge would allow the person to speak and explain the circumstances leading up to citation, reducing the charge or fee upon his judgement.
Heaven forbid I should be brought before a judge for anything more serious, but I hope I would have enough integrity to ask my lawyer to plead guilty (if I were) and avoid the time and expense of the song and dance.
Well, gosh, that applies to MOST jobs, doesn’t it? A machinists’s job is to machine parts to particular specifications. A veterinarian’s job is to tend to the medical needs of animals. A pilot’s job is to fly planes safely. A car salesman’s job is to sell cars. A janitor’s job is to clean and maintain buildings.
Some jobs have codes of ethics, but ethics are rarely the central point of a job. Lawyers, actually, have FAR more concern for ethics than most jobs, if anything.
Casting lawyers as inherently dishonest strikes me as being wildly ignorant - no offense or anything, but it just is. Lawyers are no more or less prone to dishonesty than anyone else.
Aside from the fact people too often get their information from “Law and Order” (which also leads to the misapprehension that most lawyers practice criminal law) I suspect they get a lot of their bad reputation from two admittedly unpleasant facts:
- They’re expensive, and
- They are usually encountered when things go wrong, or in anticipation of things going wrong.
To my mind, both these facts simply demonstrate they’re important. As my father (not a lawyer) told me, “Son, you know why lawyers are expensive? They’re worth it.”
“Did I do it” is a more complex question than you think-
They may have done something, but it doesn’t meet the details of the exact crime they are charged with. So maybe they shoplifted something, but it wasn’t to the level of grand larceny. So they were not guilty for that, but when the charges were amended, they then could plead guilty.
if you killed someone would you really plead guilty to Murder 1 if your crime didn’t mean the criteria for that charge?
In the legal world, “not guilty” is not the same thing as being innocent. Even a judge might suggest to a defendant to enter a plea of “not guilty” until and unless the defendant has had an opportunity to review the evidence against him and make an informed decision about how to proceed with his or her case. A lawyer entering a “not guilty” plea on behalf of the client has nothing to do with the lawyer’s (or necessarily the defendant’s) honesty.
Another example of my definition of “honesty”.
A co-worker would tell me stories of his smoking crystal meth. I told him never to let me see him do it so I could “honestly” state I’d heard him speak about it, but never personally witnessed it. Sure enough, I was called into HR because another co-worker made an accusation. When asked, I stated “I’ve heard him (the first co-worker) talk about it, but I’ve never seen him smoking it”. Gahhh…there I go being like a lawyer again!!! LOL
It seems “Guilty, with an explanation” = Not guilty. Certainly no harm in going in with that attitude since “guilty” slams the door.
I meant to say that the above might happen with a pro se defendant.
What else could you possibly say? You never saw him smoke meth, why would you ever say that you did? How is that dishonest in any way?
I think your definition of “honest” needs some work.
I’m not aware of any per se. There are various situations in which an attorney’s fee has to be approved by a court/tribunal. So excessive fees could be reduced. Various factors can be taken into account.
I have not perceived courts or the agency I work for at all sympathetic to accusations of overbilling.
The state regulatory commissions should theoretically oversee this, but I stated upthread what I thought of what I perceive as essentially a self-regulating system.
Many clients lack the sophistication to challenge atty fees. And I’ve encountered several firms that are extremely aggressive in seeking collection of fees they believe they are owed.
But in short, most courts presume a client has the right to contract with lawyers as they wish. (Sure, say what you will about unequal information/etc.) Once you agree to pay an attorney x, why shouldn’t you be held to the terms of the contract.
Another datapoint. I briefly worked for a private firm doing collections. I was able to bill the clients - a couple of S&Ls, hourly rather than contingent. I firmly believed that it was not worthwhile to pursue any claim less than $10k. This was (probably) 25 years ago.
IMO/E if someone is representing smaller claims on a contingent basis, they are just churning the files, putting in the minimal effort possible, hoping for enough favorable decisions to give them a decent profit.
IANAL but …
Where the gray area comes in is what constitutes honest? I know my client did it, I know he will probably do it again. I also know that the other side made a small technical/clerical mistake that I can use to get him/her totally off.
Do I do it? Does it make a difference if we’re talking something like a real estate purchase versus a rape? Do I care if its my community or not?
As others have said, if a lawyer is true to the oath they do whatever they have to within the limits of the law for their client. That makes them honest and that is pretty much the end of the discussion. But since they live with the rest of us and our mileage may vary from theirs ------- some of them lose a lot of sleep over things like that or pick their areas of practice and clients to avoid the more conflicting situations.
Ahhh, one would think but ----------- my wife has worked in the law (secretary/para) for 40 years and I know way too many attorneys and judges to ever get on a jury but … especially on the criminal side things are never simple. Its one of the reasons she has stayed on the corporate side of things.
Many lawyers will never ask their client in terms of guilt. Guilt doesn’t matter; what they need to learn are as many details as they can of what happened. Guilt is almost never a yes or no response answer at trial; it is a complex portrait of grays.
Now as for the “not guilty” plea; that is a formality at arraignment even when all sides know going in that the end result is going to be guilty. I had a friend who had to represent an Amish client in a criminal case and this little point about caused him to lose what little hair he had left. He said, at arraignment, “not guilty” at which point the client piped up that yes he did do it. The judge took the time to explain to the man just what this part of the process was but -------- lets just say all parties involved left a little tired and confused. And a plea of “not guilty” was entered.
That one, like many of the cases he handles, never saw a courtroom again except to enter the terms of the plea agreement and get sentenced. OK – here is where we can get back into debating honesty; the lawyer had another client charged at the same time possibly going to trial. He and the ADA were in the men’s room when he offered “Give Mr Yoder probation and time served and I’ll talk Mr Z into 2nd degree instead of fighting for 3rd.” He basically traded off one man maybe – just maybe – getting a lighter sentence to assure both men got lighter sentences than they would have at the conclusion of a trial. Honest? That is where we can move into a debate.
That’s because you’re using a strange and self-destructive definition of ‘honesty.’ A plea of not guilty means that you are requiring the prosecution to prove their case as they’re obliged to in the US legal system. Pleading guilty if you don’t have a plea bargain is stupid and self-destructive, and pleading not guilty does not actually involve a lie, as it doesn’t require you to assert any facts at all, much less anything untrue.
It doesn’t rely on any certainty. If, in a lawyer’s best professional judgment, he could get an acquittal but goes for a reduced sentence instead, is he providing his client with the best possible defense? Obviously he is not - very few clients would prefer a reduced sentence to an outright acquittal.
Exactly. And an acquittal leaves a client in a better position than a reduced sentence. Since an attorney is ethically obligated to present the best defense possible, he must work for acquittal whenever possible. So when I said
I was being accurate.
Regards,
Shodan
They can defend anyone one they want. They are a necessary evil. I just, personally, don’t consider trying to get a criminal you consider guilty off, as “honest.” It’s outstanding on a professional level though.
I don’t have any complaint. I’ve already said they are necessary, and should have no additional restraints put on them whatsoever in accordance to the law. It doesn’t make them “honest” though, and I disagree with the entirety of the rest of your statement. The OJ verdict tarnished the entire legal system. Getting him off was nothing to be proud of, other than bragging rights as a professional. They did a great job, professionally speaking.
On balance it’s done more good than harm. A few unfortunate outcomes does not negate that.
I agree, and necessary.
I think it comes down to “assuming no other information, who do you trust more, a lawyer or a ______”, and I would say probably more times than not it would be the other profession.
And funny, if I was I trouble there are few I’d trust more to work really hard on best interests.
Where exactly does the dishonesty come in? Is demanding that the state follow it’s own laws somehow dishonest? The only lawyer I see being dishonest in a typical criminal case is the PROSECUTOR, who makes the claim ‘Defendant should be in jail, we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt without violating any of the limits placed on the government’ but then fails to actually prove the case. Trying to make the government actually follow it’s own laws and **prove beyond a reasonable doubt **that the person committed the crime is completely honest, while claiming that you can prove such beyond a reasonable doubt when you have insufficient evidence, or only evidence tainted by the police lying when they claimed that they properly collected it doesn’t strike me as honest in the least.
The position that defense lawyers are somehow dishonest for insisting that the government to do what it is bound by law to do is extremely authoritarian, and not morally justifiable in the least.
This is an extremely authoritarian worldview, why does the government side get automatically counted as being honest? In order to submit evidence, the prosecutor and police have to make the claim under oath that it was lawfully obtained. If it wasn’t, then they are lying under oath! But for some reason you claim that the person calling them out for their dishonesty is is actually the one being dishonest, even though he’s making only true statements, and are casting the lies of the police and prosecutor as a mere technical or clerical mistake.