Unfortunately, their procedures encouraged bill padding. They had a secretary download the email, print it out, put it on the lawyer’s desk, and the lawyer read it a day or so later. The lawyers replied by dictating to their secretaries, who either composed an email or often, a letter on stationery (which they then scanned and sent to me as a PDF). None of these offices had broadband, and they charged me for download time–as well as the secretary’s time.

Also, there were some emails exchanged between myself and the opposing party in the case (before I hired a lawyer), where we were responding to each other by top-posting and did not snip the old emails below. The lawyers insisted they had to read each email entire–they refused to consider merely ignoring old material clearly set off in quote marks–and they billed me accordingly. As well as complaining copiously about “having to read email,” which they implied was unusual and a hardship.