Contract Attorney Charged With Overbilling

The web page of the Ohio Supreme Court lists four disciplinary cases that are scheduled for hearing in the near future.

One of the cases involves an allegation that an independent contractor attorney had overbilled a law firm for online document review in a case.

From the charging document

Starting in 2012, respondent began working on a large pharmaceutical project for Ulmer & Berne. Similar to what she had done in the past, respondent accessed documents related to this project via a secure website where she read, coded, and summarized documents for Ulmer & Berne attorneys involved in the project…

In late 2015, Ulmer & Berne discovered a discrepancy between the amount of hours that respondent had submitted to Ulmer & Berne as time spent reviewing documents and the amount of hours that respondent was logged on to the secure website.

Thereafter, Ulmer & Berne performed a comprehensive audit of respondent’s time records between 2012 and 2015 and determined that respondent had overbilled the firm…

In total, between 2012 and 2015, respondent overbilled Ulmer & Berne by $87,620.

In December 2015, Attorney Gina Saelinger, a partner at Ulmer & Berne, called respondent to discuss Ulmer & Berne’s findings and to determine whether respondent had an explanation for her conduct.

At first, respondent stated that she was a bad record keeper and that she had some issues with her computer, but by the end of the conversation, respondent acknowledged her misconduct and requested the opportunity to reimburse Ulmer & Berne for any overbilled amounts.

On January 5, 2016, respondent wired Ulmer & Berne $87,620.

Very few state bar web pages provide such easy access to allegations of unethical conduct. (Mike Frisch)