Wealth Management
A recent complaint filed by the Illinois Administrator
Between 2002 and 2024, Respondent worked as an attorney in the Chicago offices of two large international law firms. Respondent worked as an equity partner at the first of those two firms (“Firm A”) from approximately 2002 to 2022, where he concentrated his practice in providing legal services to wealthy individuals and their trusts and estates. In August 2022, Respondent joined the second firm (“Firm B”) as a shareholder, where he continued to provide the same or similar legal services to the same or similar individuals and trusts and estates as he provided at Firm A. As an equity partner in Firm A and as a shareholder in Firm B, Respondent shared in each firm’s profits and losses.
As an attorney at both Firm A and Firm B, Respondent was ultimately responsible for decisions affecting the clients he brought to the firm, including the clients described in paragraphs six and seven, below (“Respondent’s clients” and “his clients”). As the attorney who was ultimately responsible for the decisions affecting his clients, Respondent decided which firm attorneys would be assigned tasks and would provide services related to each client matter, as well as to how much he and the firm attorneys to whom he assigned tasks would charge his clients.
Respondent allegedly directed attorneys and staff who serviced his clients
Between at least 2004 and 2024, Respondent falsified the billing records pertaining to his clients at both firms so that his clients were billed for services the firm did not provide those clients, or billed for time that, by the firms’ customs and practices, should have been written off because, for example, the individual who recorded the time worked inefficiently or provided services that should not have been charged to clients for other reasons. Respondent falsified the billing records by mischaracterizing time originally recorded by firm employees who actually performed the work for a client as the time spent in service to another client. In other instances, Respondent artificially inflated the number of hours a firm employee worked on a client matter. In either case, Respondent’s mischaracterizations of billing records caused the firm to send artificially inflated invoices to Respondent’s clients.
Alleged
Between approximately April 12, 2004, and August 14, 2022, Respondent mischaracterized time originally recorded by Firm A attorneys having a value of more than $2.5 million. The 17 clients who received those invoices, listed below in a manner that does not disclose their identities, later paid the amounts listed in the invoices, including making payments for purported legal services that Respondent knew had not been performed for those clients’ benefit.
And
Between approximately August 2022 and April 2024, Respondent mischaracterized time originally recorded by Firm B attorneys having a value of more than $970,000. The 10 clients who received those invoices, listed below in a manner that does not disclose their identities, later paid the amounts listed in the invoices, including making payments for purported legals [sic] services that Respondent knew had not been performed for those clients’ benefit.
The firm’s actions
After learning of Respondent’s mischaracterization of time on invoices sent to clients, both Firm A and Firm B conducted reviews of the client invoices Respondent sent to the affected clients and offered to refund the [a]mounts that were billed based upon false information about which timekeepers provided the services for which the clients were billed. Some, but not all, of the clients agreed to accept the refunds offered by the firms.
An announcement apparently from Firm B
William M. Doyle, Lawrence M. Kern, and Eric C. Nelson joined Greenberg Traurig, LLP as shareholders in Chicago, with the intent to utilize Greenberg Traurig’s deep U.S. and global platform to benefit their sophisticated client base in all the markets where high-net-worth individuals live and work.
Doyle is a renowned tax and estate-planning expert with more than four decades of experience representing many of the wealthiest families in the United States and around the world. He joins from Winston & Strawn, where he served as Trusts and Estates Practice chair.
(Mike Frisch)