Charging fees for conflicts screening and letter of engagement

[beachbum]

I would very much appreciate input from attorneys on this forum about whether it is customary and ethical to charge a client for conflicts screening and a letter of engagement. I was under the impression that most attorneys don't begin charging for work until they accept a client, and that is not until these are completed.

The details:

I recently saw an attorney in NY at one of the well known law firms. He informed me he had to ask me a number of questions before he could agree to help me to insure he and his firm had no conlicts with existing clients. It turned out he did not. Then he said he needed both a retainer and also needed to send me a letter of engagement. I received it and emailed back a few questions about it (ie, it gave a range of fees rather than specific fees so I wanted clarification, etc). I signed the letter and returned it with my check. We then spent an hour discussing my issues at which point I needed no addtional help. When I received his bill (taken from the retainer), I was very surprised to see that, besides charging me for the hour we spent discussing my problem, he also charged me about 1.5 hrs for conflict screening and letter of engagement issues. Is this customary or was he being overly aggressive in billing?

Thanks for any input.

jay

 

[Michael Wechsler]

That's a good question. I don't think it's proper for an attorney to bill you for a conflict check because they have to do this before undertaking your case. Both are costs of doing business in order to do the business. If you ended up not hiring the attorney the conflict check couldn't be billed to you. Did you discuss these items before? Is there any mention of what you going to be billed for in the agreement?

 

[beachbum]

Thanks thelawprofessor, I appreciate your reply.
No, we didn't discuss whehter I would be charged for conflicts screening. He only told me he would need to do conflicts screening before he could agree to work with me. The agreement only discussed billing practices in a very general way, nothing specific about conflicts screening or the letter of engagement being included. Personally, I think this was quite unethical. However, please note that not only did he charge me for conflicts screening time but he also charged me for the time it took to prepare and respond to a few questions related to his letter of engagement. His letter of engaagement was predominently boiler plate and I had a few quick questions on how that boiler plate language would apply to me so I asked in an email about a couple of paragraphs. So for me to get 1 hour of consultation time I got billed for 2.5 hours of attorney time. That just seems wrong, especially since I really doubt he in fact spent 1.5 hours dealing with the conflict screening and letter of engagement issues. Maybe they have a policy to round up every task, even if it only takes 5 minutes, to the nearest half hour and he did that several times. Still, that's wrong since it doesn't seem right to have charged me for his screening and engagement letter at all. Furthermore, he told me that the letter of engagement was mandated by state law, but I actually looked it up and the law said it was mandated only in specific circumstances (it's been a while so I forget the details - it might have been only for retainers over a certain dollar limit or number of hours which didint' apply to me). So I do feel I was taken advantage of. I ended up paying because they had worded the letter of engagement that if they spent any time defending or collecting their bills then they would bill for that time as well. This was at a first class law firm, not some third rate firm. In essence, they created a sturcture to allow initial overbilling and also to overbill further should you resist. Why are they allowed to get away with th is kind of behavior? Thanks again for your input, it is much appreciated.