Thursday, September 22, 2022

Document Review

The Illinois Administrator has filed charges alleging billing misconduct by a Dentons attorney

In late 2020 and early 2021, Respondent was assigned to a document review project in which he was to review a substantial number of documents belonging to one of Denton’s clients to determine which documents should be produced by the client in response to discovery requests in a litigation matter. As part of his review of the client’s documents, Respondent was responsible for determining which documents were relevant and responsive to the discovery requests in the litigation, which were irrelevant or non-responsive, and which documents may be subject to attorney-client privilege. Respondent would use the firm’s document review software to mark the documents as reviewed, and would flag the reviewed documents as responsive, non-responsive, or subject to privilege.

Between December 2020 and March 2021, with regard to the document review project described...above, Respondent marked a total of 425 documents as having been reviewed by him and recorded a total of approximately 277 hours of time related to the review of said documents. Respondent then submitted his billing entries to his supervisors at Dentons.

In or about March 2021, upon reviewing Respondent’s work, Respondent’s supervisors at Dentons determined that Respondent had not opened or reviewed approximately 405 of the 425 documents that he claimed to have reviewed, and for which he submitted time records, as described...above.

Respondent’s records of time he spent on document review, as described...above, were false because he had only reviewed approximately 20 of the 425 documents he had marked as reviewed. In addition, between December 2020 and March 2021, Respondent had not spent 277 hours reviewing the documents he claimed to have reviewed.

(Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2022/09/the-illinois-administrator-has-filed-charges-alleging-billing-misconduct-by-a-dentons-attorney.html

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