Christian Lawrence Kline was a contract lawyer assigned by Ajilon Legal to do document review for a Mayer Brown client back in December 2005.
He billed 135 hours over about a two-week period, but was accused of only having done 52 hours’ work.
Amazingly, it was poor recordkeeping that let him avoid sanction by the Illinois bar [HT: Legal Profession Blog] (which, you’ll recall is the same disciplinary authority that brought our attention (again, courtsey of the Legal Profession Blog) to Loren Friedman and his beyond-obsessive need for a graduate degree, and Mark Maciasz, the former Holland & Knight lawyer doing too much work on the side).
There simply wasn’t enough admissible evidence to support the initial finding of the administrator, so the appellate review board reversed and recommended dismissal with prejudice.
Details after the jump.
It all starts out as a fairly routine document review for production.
The documents to be reviewed had been scanned into a computerized, on-line document review system, Case Data. Contract attorneys were given batches of documents to review using Case Data. Two Mayer, Brown attorneys, Tara Thompson and Rosaria Owen, oversaw the contract attorneys’ work.
Generally, Thompson assigned the work to the contract attorneys. She did not check completed batches of documents before assigning a new batch to the contract attorney. Mayer, Brown attorneys, however, did perform quality control checks on contract attorneys’ work.
Thompson conducted a quality control check, using the Case Data system, after Kline’s assignment to the project ended. From this review, it appeared to Thompson that a large number of documents had not been reviewed. Thompson investigated, using Case Data, and determined that the documents involved had been assigned to Kline.
The problem becomes that there was no way of telling exactly how long Kline actually spent reviewing documents. At the initial hearing, the administrator extrapolated working hours by time between “edits.”
Case Data is essentially a database with data fields for each document. Fields indicated, inter alia, the time that a given document had been accessed and edited and by whom. After noticing a problem with the batches of documents assigned to Kline, Thompson ran a report of Kline’s usage in the system, to see what the system showed had been done with the documents assigned to Kline. After exporting the data to another program, Excel, Thompson generated a report. This report, which was admitted into evidence as Administrator’s Exhibit 3, formed the basis for the Administrator’s case.
The report provides certain, specific information. Each document is identified with an identification number, but the documents are not otherwise described, e.g., there is no indication of the length or complexity of any document. The report shows a date and time and the number of minutes elapsed between edits. The report reflects some large time gaps between edits, a small number of edits for some days, no edits for other days for which Kline billed time, and, in some instances, very short times between edits. Administrator’s Exhibit 3 did not show when Kline arrived at, or left, work on any given day. It only showed edits and the time elapsed between the edits shown.
Once Mayer Brown became aware of the problem, it credited the unidentified client for the amounts paid, and got a refund from Ajilon (which was billing Kline at $70/hr and paying him $35).
But is not keeping track of temps’ comings and goings common? The case becomes a discussion of the rules of evidence, and notes that there were no timesheets or other reliable way of documenting Kline’s efforts.
Or worse, how about temps having no social interaction with each other, despite spending long periods of time together?
Two Ajilon supervisory employees testified at the hearing. Neither of them had personal knowledge of how many hours Kline actually worked at Mayer, Brown, when he arrived, when he left, or how he spent his time.
Two other Ajilon contract attorneys assigned to the Mayer, Brown project testified. One of them, Elizabeth Brasser, testified that there was one male attorney who came in later in the day than the other contract attorneys. She did not know whether that attorney was Kline. Brasser did not remember Kline specifically and did not know what hours, or how many hours, he worked. The other Ajilon contract attorney, Robert Naumann, testified that Kline typically arrived late in the morning but was always there when Naumann left at the end of the day. Naumann believed that, when Kline was present, he was doing work because Kline actively participated in discussions among the contract attorneys about the work being done. Naumann testified that, while he did not know how many total hours Kline worked, he worked at least five or six hours a day. With the possible exception of December 26, 2005, Naumann was not aware of any days that Kline was not at work at all.
That’s two wins in a row for lawyers who used to work in the Mayer Brown office, with Joe Collins’s recent non-sanction by the SEC.
And not to turn this into an advertorial, but may we suggest our sponsor Chrometa’s time-tracking software would help avoid situations just like this?
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post. I am glad Chris Kline survived to click another day.
Great post. I am glad Chris Kline survived to click another day.