$250 Per Hour Errands

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ordered a two-year suspension of an attorney who had “systematically overbilled” a client.

During the events giving rise to this matter, Attorney Armstrong was a licensed real estate broker doing business as ABA Realty, Inc.  She was the only broker employed by the firm.  Attorney Armstrong was licensed by the office of the Insurance Commissioner of Wisconsin to sell life, accident, and health insurance lines for several companies.

From the 1980s until October 2005, Attorney Armstrong had an attorney-client relationship with a woman we shall refer to as B.R.T.  B.R.T. was born in October 1924.  Briefly stated, Attorney Armstrong engaged in a lengthy pattern of misconduct, repeatedly overbilling her client, and ultimately, between 2000 and 2005, charging her client $170,651.95 for various tasks, many of which were not legal in nature.

The court

between September 1, 2004, and November 1, 2005, Attorney Armstrong billed B.R.T. somewhere between $58,422.32 and $62,815.20 for what was primarily nonprofessional work assisting B.R.T. with matters related to her duplex.  This work included “general contractor” type of services (such as consulting with her client about needed repairs, soliciting bids, and helping select contractors such as painters, carpenters, plumbers, and the like); property manager services (such as dunning tenants for unpaid rent, fielding complaints, keeping accounting records for rents, listing the duplex for lease, and seeking new tenants); retaining and supervising workers to clean the duplex; personally sorting and boxing the client’s personal property; and running errands (such as picking up parts and supplies, boxes, plastic bags, packing tape, mulch, and the like).

Attorney Armstrong charged her client at her professional rate of $250 per hour for these services and charged her client $150 per hour for services performed by legal assistants.

The OLR alleged and the parties have stipulated that, by charging her $250 hourly rate as an attorney, and by charging her paraprofessional staff rate of $150 per hour, for the aforementioned nonprofessional work, Attorney Armstrong violated former SCR 20:1.5(a) 

The attorney stipulated to the violations. (Mike Frisch)