Cheating? I hope not. (Of course they are)

Saw something interesting in the comments, in which a contract attorney asked:

Is this a good place to bitch about a coworker who apparently was billing 40 hours a week despite not even showing up to work?

to which I reply, brother, you have indeed found the right place. I think every project has somebody who thinks he is ahead of the game, getting paid double. Some of them actually are. Obviously, this is something difficult to confirm, but even the thought of it is enough to raise the ire of most contract attorneys. And, of course, the envy. Just a little less scrupulous, and you, too, could . . .

Anyway, most of us don't go there. Just enough do, of course, to taint the rest of us, but what's a little ethical breech among friends, right? So yeah, I got stories.

The swordfish project -- the one that spawned this blog -- ended in such a funky, jerky, still-a-little-life kind of way that it actually encouraged double billing. When they told us we were done, a number of us jumped to the project I was on next. When it became clear that Swordfish was going to keep lurching along, with day-to-day notices of whether and how much people were working, some of the people who had jumped kept working both projects. I don't know if there was double billing, but I would have a heart attack if there wasn't. The two work sites were a block apart. It would be easy to be seen around each one just enough to claim full hours on both. I would not bet that no one did that.

But that's not the kind of non-work that my commenter is bitching about, I think. The commenter is offended by the flat-out, not-there-but-billing-anyway kind of chutzpah that is both admired and despised. Admired, because money for nothing sounds good. Despised, because some of use actually have a conscience. Plus, we deeply, desperately hope that these assholes will always get caught. Alas, such is not the case.

My favorite example of this kind of non-work happened about three years ago. I was on a massive project, well over 150 contract attorneys doing first review. Then we got cut to second review, about 1/3 left, then we got cut to privilege review, leaving about 15 out of the original 150. It was a very good hours project that paid for a class trip to Germany with my son. God knows what it paid for for some folks.

After about 2 months of privilege review with about 15 people (this project went on for more than a year), the associates became a touch suspicious about some people's hours claims. We were allowed to work 12 hours a day. All 15 people left on priv review were claiming 12 hours a day. To do that required arriving at 8 am. At least 2 guys were never there before 10 am, yet managed to bill the same 12 hours a day. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

One of those guys liked to arrive at 10, spend about an hour on personal business on the phone (or, at one point in the project, doing his taxes) and then finally get to work. Given the shitty quality of his work, this might actually have been a plus from the firm's point of view.

The other guy who proved to be a fanciful biller was, apparently, a junkie. He would show up at about 11 am, pass out at his desk for a while, leave at about 2 - apparently to go see his pusher - come back at about 4, pass out until about 6, leave at 7 and bill until 8. For seven hours of presence, he would bill 12 hours.

Finally, one of the associates ran the numbers, since we were using a software that required us to log in to an online offsite system. No one was accused of cheating or lying. But the two people who were lying got canned.

Truthfully? It was the only time I've seen justice served on that particular issue. Unfortunately, it seems that the people inclined to perpetrate that kind of fraud seem to get away with it. If they aren't getting away with it, it would be a good idea to let CAs know. If you don't believe the system will deliver justice, there is no reason to abide by the rules of the system.