There are certainly fair criticisms of the billable hour — that it rewards inefficiencies, redundancies and waste are chief among them — but a line must be drawn somewhere. One Tennessee lawyer, Yarboro Sallee, has learned that billing for watching television is definitely on the no-no side of the line.
Sallee was hired by grieved parents who felt their daughter’s tragic death may have been caused by their son-in-law, motivated by a large insurance pay out. Sallee filed the wrongful death complaint, then started watching true-crime television. And billing for it. I know those shows can be addictive — who among us hasn’t gotten sucked into a marathon of Snapped because women who kill are fascinating — but you have to recognize that binge watching TV is not doing your job.
To be clear about Sallee’s actions, it wasn’t like she had TV on while she was editing a document, waiting for the printer, coding documents or otherwise multitasking. She straight-up billed for watching TV — and the bill for watching the CBS News show 48 Hours was $5,000. And there were other shows she billed for! From the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision (emphasis added):
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Attorney Sallee pointed to a particular time entry on her “billing statement” as legitimate billable time because it was spent watching a five-hour documentary on the Peterson “Stair Case Murder” in North Carolina. Her motion did not address a 12.5-hour time entry on September 25, 2010, for watching “48 Hours” episodes on similar spousal homicides, a 4.0-hour time entry on October 19, 2010 for watching four “48 Hours” episodes on asphyxia, or a 3.5-hour time entry on October 20, 2010 for watching these same “48 Hours” episodes a second time. At Attorney Sallee’s regular hourly rate, this would amount to over $5,000 for watching episodes of “48 Hours.”
The best part is she was indignant about her… unconventional methods, saying, “Since when is television not a respectable avenue for research anyway.”
Indeed.
Sallee’s research methods came under fire when her (now former) clients filed a complaint with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility. They’d fired Sallee and she refused to turn over the full case file. Sallee responded to this complaint with an itemized bill for $140,000 (blowing past the entire estimate for the case when only the complaint had been filed) with the damning TV entries.
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And if you think that just turning in a timesheet that blatantly states you are on your couch watching TV takes some gall, you’ll love Sallee’s reaction during the disciplinary hearings:
Attorney Sallee’s argument on this issue highlights perhaps the most
disturbing of the aggravating factors present in this case: Attorney Sallee’s obdurate insistence that she did nothing wrong. At every turn in these proceedings, faced with findings at every level that her conduct breached numerous ethical rules, attorney Sallee has been doggedly unrepentant. Indeed, her consistent response has bordered on righteous indignation. Under all of these circumstances, we find ample support for the one-year suspension in this case.
That just seems like a special level of pig-headedness. Hopefully she’ll use the one-year suspension this incident earned her to mellow out some.
Read the full decision on the next page.
Billing For Watching TV May Be Excessive [Legal Profession Blog]
Lawyer who billed clients for watching true-crime shows is suspended [ABA Journal]