GEORGE S. KAUFMAN (1889-1961) ON LEGAL BILLING

 

 

George S. Kaufman should be familiar to most, though he died 60 years ago.

He was a playwright, theatrical director, producer, humorist and drama critic.  He won 2 Pulitzer prizes:  for the musical Of Thee I Sing and the comedy You Can't Take It With You.  He wrote several musicals for the Marx Brother, The Cocoanuts, and Animal Crackers. (very important), and was a member of the Algonquin Round Table (also very important).

He was a great wit, while trying to locate one of my favorite Kaufman quotes, about getting something for nothing (a great quote for another time), I came across the gem, shown above, about lawyers.  The best bit is the last:

"You heard about the man who go a bill from his lawyer which said, 'For crossing the street to speak to you and discovering it was not you, twelve dollars.'"

I don't know the date of this quote, but Kaufman was writing Broadway plays a hundred years ago, and maybe 12 bucks was a big deal back then.

Before researching the prevailing hourly rates for New York lawyers in 1921, I got to thinking.  I was an insurance defense attorney for 6 years, and there were times when twelve dollars seemed a big deal to my carrier's billing review company.

As an example, let me take a situation like that described in Kaufman's quote, but substitute "opposing counsel" for client and assume that there was no mistaken identity, and that we actually met, on the streets of Downtown Detroit (remember when?) and discussed a current case.

Immediately upon my return to the office (possibly), I would have entered my time on our billing program. For simplicity's sake, I'll omit the tags and activity codes, and would bill .3 hours, 18 minutes, with the following description:

"Met with plaintiff's counsel in Detroit, and discussed the status of various outstanding discovery requests.  Counsel indicated that the requested documents, and answers had been received in rough form from his client, and he had to review them and "polish them up".  He would get them to me hopefully within 10 days.  Also discussed scheduling the depositions of his people.  One was a former employee over whom he had no control, but he would like to try to arrange the deposition informally, without needing a subpoena.  He'd let me know, again in 10 days."

In the fullness of time that entry, along with others was submitted to the client through its bill review company.  Let's make up a name for the company, totally at random.  Let's call it "NadirEdge-EvilHex".  I am sure we would have called it "Evil" for short.