Case - Committee For Public Counsel Services V. Norman S. LOOKER. No, 97-P-2128

EXERCISES

1. Do you think Mr. Lookner expected the Committee for Public Counsel Services to conduct an audit of his billings?

2. Do you think a court would take into ac-count the types of clients Lookner would be repre-senting and the fact that the Committee is a nonprofit/governmental entity?

3. What do you think of the auditor's conclu-sion that the Committee had been overbilled by Lookner's rounding tasks to .25 hours instead of billing for the actual time incurred?

4. What if Lookner had argued that in some in-stances he billed .25 when the service was actually .30 or .35, that he actually rounded down, and that it "all came out in the wash" and was, in fact, reason-ably fair? Is this argument compelling to you?

5. Lookner failed to keep detailed records of exactly what he did on cases, but did record the amount of time he spent. Why was this not enough to please the auditors? What other fact concerned the auditors and led them to question even the amount of time that he recorded?

6. Did Lookner's billing practices violate the Model Rules? Why?