Report comment

May I suggest that the actual time spent by a fee earner is charged? And if two fee earners are engaged on a file then only one can charge if they are interacting with one another? May i also suggest that for ease of calculation all fee earners have a multiple of £60 per hour as their charging rate so that then if someone spends half a minute on a file he charges 50P, not £6 which he would under the present system? Someone more senior charges £120/hour, which incidentally is the French rate.Someone higher up £180 and a senior partner in the provinces £240, or £4/minute.

It is wrong to the point of fraud in my opinion for a paying party to be charged £40 in my earlier example for a 12 second conversation between a senior and junior partner. It feels wrong even without analysing why it is wrong. The fact that it has become the accepted practice just goes to show how you can be brainwashed into accepting that standard practice is all right because it is standard practice. It is not.