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‘The tyranny of the billable hour’
At the Opening of the NSW Law Term Dinner in February 2004, Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court Jim Spigelman offered his thoughts on time billing:
“One thing that has occurred over [the last 10 years] is that time-based charging has become almost universal. I do not believe that this is sustainable. I note that last year, your past president [of the Law Society of New South Wales], Robert Benjamin, published in the Law Society Journal a thoughtful piece on the tyranny of the billable hour. As I and my predecessor, Chief Justice Gleeson, have often said over the years, it is difficult to justify a system in which inefficiency is rewarded with higher remuneration.
The difficulty of course is that the person providing the service, namely the legal practitioner, does not have a financial incentive to do the service as quickly as possible. The control is of course, the practitioner’s sense of professional responsibility. For most members of the profession this restraint is a real one. Only a handful of members of the profession exploit their position by providing services that either do not need to be provided at all, or provide them in a more luxurious manner than is appropriate.
The enlightened self-interest of the majority requires some form of professional control of the handful who may abuse the system. Such conduct, even by a minority, affects the reputation of the profession as a whole and may determine the nature of external regulation. I trust that if it becomes necessary for judges to perform the function of regulating such conduct, in the course of deciding who should bear costs and at what level costs should be awarded in particular proceedings, that they will receive the support of the profession when they do so.”
19-Aug-2004
Related Tags
chief justice , law society , nsw law , supreme court
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