Ethics and the Temporary Attorney

Periodically one hears stories relating to people behaving unethically on document reviews.



I've been told about attorneys who have blatantly gotten paid for not working; in once case, on a project with unlimited OT, an attorney would go online to view pornography, back in the days before there were porn filters. In another case, the attorney would come in, fire up the computer, get a cup of coffee, leave the cup of coffee together with strategically placed reading glasses, with jacket slung across the back of the chair, as though the attorney will return momentarily...and go shopping for a couple of hours. Regularly.



While I know that everyone checks their e-mail or reads the paper or does some other thing online at some point during the day, the idea is to spend most of the day actually working; yet I remember one attorney who would come in, sign into the program and immediately leave to get coffee. This, at a firm providing good coffee on the floor. Same attorney wandered around a lot; so much that on his second day being added to the project, law firm staff noticed it. To top it off? He surfed the net at his desk, as far as we could tell, the majority of the time; it was a project on which we self-assigned work and you could look to see how much progress had been made. In his case, it was never much.