by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

For a few years while growing up, I worked at Hines Grocery in Pasadena as a box boy. It would probably be called an “upscale” market if it still existed because it was fairly expensive, had charge accounts, and offered free delivery. I was part-time during school and full-time in the summer and was paid by the hour. There was a time clock and I had a time card that I punched four times a day: arrival, lunch, back from lunch, and departure. As far as keeping time, that was all I had to remember: in, out, in, out. Even I could do that.

Before law school, I had management training jobs and was paid (not much) monthly, and there was no time clock. In law school, I worked somewhere between part- and full-time at the San Francisco Law Library and, after graduation, I worked as a law clerk, and for a short time as a deputy district attorney, in Los Angeles, where I was paid (a little more than not much) monthly.

So, by the time I went to work as an associate in a law firm, I had been off the clock for quite a while. It would be fair to say, I had little concept of trying to keep track of what I did over an hour, much less at six-minute intervals. It took some getting used to, along with the fact that the firm was billing me out at $25.00 an hour, which seemed to me to be outrageously high given my (in)capabilities. Some of you may think that would still be too high for my time these days, but I digress.

The point is that hourly billing is an acquired talent that does not come naturally or easily, and the descriptions of your work can sometimes be daunting. “Staring at the ceiling awaiting inspiration,” does not, for example, cut it. But it turns out that some have far more imagination in billing than my pedestrian thought processes can deal with.

Take Yarboro Sallee. Please.

Yarboro Sallee has been a lawyer in Knoxville since 1994. In September 2010, she was approached by Frances Rodgers and Vearl Bible whose daughter, Lori Noll, had died following a fall down steps at her home. The Medical Examiner had determined Ms. Noll’s death was accidental but her parents suspected that her husband, Adam Noll, was responsible as he had taken out a $1,000,000 life insurance policy on her life.

Based on an hourly oral fee agreement, Ms. Sallee undertook the case and filed a wrongful death action on October 15, 2010, not only on behalf of her clients but also gratuitously on behalf of Ms. Noll’s children and her estate. During the early stages of her “investigation,” Ms. Sallee kept going back to the well, so to speak, continually asking her clients for more money due to the prodigious amount of time she was spending on their case to the claimed exclusion of work for other clients.

Within three months, her clients had paid her a $5,000 advance for a forensic expert, a flat fee of $4,000 to file a juvenile matter relating to the decedent’s children, and $30,000 for the wrongful death action. In December, her clients asked for a written fee contract. Ms. Sallee responded with “several confusing draft agreements that included ‘a conglomeration of hourly charges, plus contingent [fees].’” Inasmuch as her clients were under the impression that the agreement was hourly without contingent fees, they refused to sign and “a torrent of emails between attorney Sallee and Ms. Rodgers ensued.” By the following January, the bloom was off the rose; her clients formally discharged Ms. Sallee and complained to the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility. Despite the complaint, Ms. Sallee refused to turn over records to her clients, so they hired another attorney, Larry Vaughan, to obtain them. Ms. Sallee responded by emails threatening “filing a cross complaint against [her former] clients for theft of services and other unsavory torts” as well as “felony violations of TCA.” Suffice it to say that attitude did not lubricate a resolution, although it worked nicely in providing additional charges against her.

Ms. Sallee claimed she worked over 493.5 hours in three months, a claim that the Tennessee Supreme Court viewed with “a certain amount of skepticism.” If anything tipped the scales against her, it was that she billed for watching many hours of reality crime television shows including 48 Hours. She also billed time and one-half ($375) for tasks after business hours, which, I assume, was when many of these shows aired.

As the Supreme Court in affirming a one-year suspension put it: “... a lawyer who represents criminal clients may be interested in watching Perry Mason or Breaking Bad on television, and may even pick up a useful tidbit or two from doing so ... [but] may not equate that to research for which ... she may charge a client.”

I think what she did was terrible. The only show I ever billed for watching was L.A. Law.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.