There are a number of paired entries where one legal assistant bills a .10 or .20 to tell another legal assistant to input documents into a Summation database. Summation, like the program our firm uses, Caselogistix, is a database that enables the law firm to categorize and search discovery documents, among other things. Then the second paralegal bills for importing the documents into the database and categorizing them.

The irony? I could see no laptop computer on the other side of the table. Summation has “briefcasing” abilities that allows the entire database, including the word index, to be saved on a laptop and used at trial. Caselogistix has the same functionality and I had my client’s entire database on my laptop. The other side, however, had a collection of banker’s boxes and no laptop in use that I could see. Whenever there was a document issue, I could see the senior associate leafing through the exhibit notebooks (one 4 incher and one 3 incher) trying to find a document to address the question. Again, no laptop.

Clients should not be paying for such inefficiency. I had Wells Fargo’s entire notebook in electronic form on my laptop. It was in a pdf file and I could word search it. I had better searching capabilities of Wells Fargo’s exhibit book than Wells Fargo did.

Wake up, corporate America. If you publish a billing policy, enforce it. I represent corporations with billing policies. I follow them. I have clients with e-billing and UTBMS codes. Most billing policies I’ve seen, other than one client that actually was part of FedEx, prohibit the routine use of overnight delivery services. But the fee affidavit I referred to was sent to me by email around 3:30 on Friday afternoon and then a hard copy was sent “Priority Overnight” for delivery Monday morning. I received it before 9:00 a.m. For what reason? Wells Fargo shouldn’t pay for this waste and neither should my client as the recipient of the fee application.

Dear reader (readers?), please instruct your staff about the judicious use of overnight delivery. If I am sent an email, what requirement is there to send a Priority Overnight FedEx, unless you have family members whose incomes depend on the success of FedEx?

I have represented very large corporations, and still do. But there are people within some corporations who seem to feel that a large law firm, with all of its inefficiencies, is the only way to get effective representation. Or the in-house decision-maker feels a large law firm provides “cover.” But when they do this, and pay the bills that contain obvious wastes of resources, how will a law firm ever become more efficient? Paying the bills of a firm that uses Summation in the office but not at trial, but instead sends a high-priced associate to manage the paper, rewards inefficiency. Most firms I represent will not allow two lawyers to attend a hearing without prior permission. Was there permission?

This was a $200,000 collection case. My firm has two lawyers and a paralegal. Wells Fargo is an enormous corporation. Did they think I was going to outgun them with my “vast” resources from the world HQ in Jupiter, FL? At one point they had five people working on this file. That’s two more people than I have in my firm. The staffing on this file was ridiculous as was the billing.

That’s the incredulous view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin and I billed no one for this blog entry.

Now there is order. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Florida law on time limitations applies to arbitration. In a unanimous ruling, the Court held that arbitration is a “civil action” for the purposes of Florida law. Therefore, the justices ruled, the Florida statutes of limitation apply.

What does this mean? First, it means that the time limitation for certain actions may be time-barred. Second, it means that the FINRA “six year rule” may not be the only deadline in play.

And remember the lawyers and regulators who wanted arbitration to be optional? Now arbitration will have the same time limitations as court.

That the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

Well, I found an exception. As I mentioned, I just finished trying a case against Wells Fargo Advisors. In connection with that case, which was tried in less than two days, I submitted a bill for the work my firm did, including costs, to the arbitrators. That bill was in the low $30,000 range. That’s about right for a case of the type and size I was handling.

Opposing counsel, however, apparently did a lot more work than I did. Their bill was over $150,000! That’s not a typo folks. For a two day collection case, with defenses. At the hearing, the law firm sent a senior partner, at a higher rate than mine, and a senior associate, who’s rate was about 75% of mine. Collectively, the firm seems to have billed its client about $10.50 per minute for the hearing.

There are many outrageous entries. There’s a 36 minute entry by opposing counsel to review a two-line email that I sent to FINRA. Then a 12 minute entry to write a two-word response. There’s what appears to be duplicate billing. There’s billing for administrative tasks like changing the due date on a calendar. I saw at least one entry where the file was billed for one legal assistant to tell another what to do.

There’s billing for hours and hours of reviewing the arbitrators’ bios. There’s billing for “organizing arbitrator ranking award information.” I thought that corporate clients stopped paying for administrative tasks a long time ago. Apparently Wells Fargo is in the minority. The firm even paid for legal assistants to update pleading binders, a task that most corporate clients stopped paying for. If you’re a lawyer and you’re reading this, get Wells Fargo’s work. It seems that they either pay for stuff that most clients no longer pay for, or they don’t review their bills closely enough to see that they’re paying for things that their policy, if they have one, prohibits.

When I received this affidavit of fees on Friday, I only looked at the total. Now that we’re digging deep into the bill, we found that this firm, which claims to represent brokerage firms, charged their client to research FINRA rules on whether or not exhibit notebooks had to be exchanged. This is basic stuff. Any firm that does this work would know that there is no such requirement without spending 48 minutes to figure this out. They could have asked their client and only billed twelve minutes for that.

There are plenty more examples of entries that a corporate client should not pay but apparently did.

That’s the view of an astounded lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin and I did not bill my client for this message.

He introduced himself then told me that his firm works exclusively with attorneys. I told him I wasn’t interested and hung up. I have heard of the firm before and don’t need their help.

So I decided to look at their website. No mention of working exclusively with attorneys. And Mr. Charpie? He’s been a broker for a total of less than 3 years. Sure, Tommy, I’ll take your advice. I’m sure you know more about this stuff than I do.

Leave me alone, guys.

1 – Wells Fargo Advisors does not have a policy stating that commissions generated by a client only belong to the “broker of record.” This may be the practice, but the branch manager testified that there is no such policy.

2 – Wells Fargo Advisors, as a matter of course, compounds interest monthly when it calculates the amount it is claiming on promissory notes. However, the promissory notes do not provide for monthly compounding of interest. When the witness was asked why the interest was compounded monthly, he essentially said “because that’s how we do it.” Wells Fargo withdrew its monthly compounding of interest calculation and was going to submit the simple interest calculation by affidavit. Haven’t seen the affidavit yet.

3 – Wells Fargo Advisors has a prepaid management fee agreement. A Wells Fargo witness claims that it is electronically attested to. No such agreement was produced.

4 – Wells Fargo Advisors’ practice of conducting most supervision through a central office, rather than at the branch level, has actually reduced the level of supervision, in my opinion as someone with over 25 years’ of experience in the securities business, not increased it. For example, a central supervision office employee has no “feel” for the office. That employee won’t recognize patterns or put a broker’s rep number to a name and then wonder why the broker is engaging in certain transactions. Instead, it appears that the branch manager pretty much waits for the central office to tell him/her what to do. In the meantime, there are certain things that the central office doesn’t look for and the branch manager can’t see. It’s a shame, too.

I used to describe being a branch manager as requiring as much art as science. Walking around the office, the branch manager can “feel” what’s going on. The manager can tell who is working and who isn’t. But if the manager is simply waiting for a computer to tell him or her what to look for, rather than being proactive, then it may be too late. And then to remove many of these tasks and assign them to some remote office to look at, well that’s just asking for a problem.

As an example, many years ago, probably close to 30, a regional administrative manager walked into a satellite office at 2:30 or so in the afternoon. The lobby was full of clients waiting to see one of the two brokers in the office. The office looked very busy. But the office had only entered 3 or 4 order tickets by 2:30. The regional admin thought it was odd and they decided to close the office and move the the brokers to the main office, under greater supervision. The brokers refused to relocate and resigned. After they left the firm, the wheels came off of the Ponzi scheme they were participating in. The regional admin was right. A computer could not detect what the regional admin understood. By the way, that regional admin is now a branch manager with Wells Fargo. And I hope his talents aren’t being wasted by relying only on computer printouts.

Today I enter my 21st year as a resident of the Sunshine State. When I left New York, branch managers managed. They reviewed. They gave sales advice. They mentored. Now they wait for HAL (that’s a Space Odyssey reference there) to tell them what to do. In my opinion, heavily relying on computers for branch office supervision (and I love computers for many things) is a mistake. Computers don’t feel. They don’t see. They don’t hear. But that’s what good managers do. Or at least they did until someone decided that computerized supervision was the next big thing.

That’s the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

At the end of the piece, I wrote that my phone logs showed calls from John Carris Investments. Another no-name firm in New York. This time it was “Fred.”

At least “Fred” didn’t insult my intelligence by referring to a non-existent prior conversation. But I still told him I wasn’t interested. Before I got a chance to tell him not to call me again, he hung up.

Note to John Carris — Don’t call me again.

Now back to work.

That’s the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

The second tip is the following statement “It’s been a while since we last talked…” Stop right there. We never talked. I am not a moron. I remember who I talk to. And I know I didn’t talk to some guy like you in any recent memory. Because you would have remembered better than I. I am not pleasant to these guys. They annoy me, these cold call cowboys.

Today, I received a call from Kevin at Joseph Gunnar. (I see they have a person named Joseph there. I wonder if they have anyone named Gunnar.)

He starts with how it’s been a while since we talked. I told him, we’ve never talked. He says “Sure we did, when you were with John Thomas.” Of course, I’ve never done business with John Thomas, which has recently been in the news. So I tell him that we don’t know each other and have never spoken.

Then I ask him my favorite question – “Do you know who I am?” So this nitwit says “Sure, you’re Marc Dobin.” I then ask him if he bothered to look me up on Google to see who I am. It’s not hard to find me. I tell him to bring me up on Google and I will be happy to explain to him how many regulations he violated just during the brief conversation we had. I told him, not so politely, not to call me again. I noticed on my phone records that they have called my office before and I don’t want them bothering me any more. I told him that I would sue his firm for continuing to call me after I tell him to stop.

It’s been a few hours, but I’ll bet they’ll call again.

I noticed from my phone logs that I am getting regular calls from John Carris Investments in New York. I wonder what they could want.

That’s the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

The downside is that you sometimes have to deal with the mess a prior tenant left behind. When we first opened the office, we were getting mail for “Lloyds Commodities.” To me, one sign of a potential fraud is the use of a name that could confuse others. “Lloyds” appeared to have nothing in common with the company’s principals. On the other hand, it could confuse people into thinking that the company is somehow linked with “Lloyds of London,” the insurance outfit from England.

Amazingly, lots of people fell for the sales scheme that was alleged in CFTC Complaint. The CFTC recently obtained an injunction freezing the assets of many companies and their principals. Information on the CFTC’s investigation can be found here.

It’s frustrating to me to see this. No matter how much education is done and how much publicity is given, there are still people who are willing to listen to snake oil salesman promising better than average returns. I’ve said it before people. There is no magic bullet.

That’s the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

Greg was the perfect example of a company man. He relocated his family to Texas when the firm asked him (firmly) to take over the Houston branch complex there. He relocated to New York, and lived apart from his family, to be a Regional Director for Smith Barney (as his employer was called then). He waited patiently to find out if he had a job after the Morgan Stanley – Smith Barney merger. He took the job as complex manager of the Garden City, New York complex, which was a lower prestige position than Regional Director. But he kept at it.

He was asked to coach a subordinate manager and see if he could be salvaged. He did what he was asked. But he eventually realized that this manager just wasn’t going to make it in the MSSB system. He recommended a termination, which he could have done all along. MSSB dawdled a bit. The manager sensed that Greg was going to fire him. So he took aggressive action to save his job. He and MSSB sacrificed Greg in the process. Greg felt that he wasn’t handled the same way that other employees had been treated in similar situations. And he felt that, after 26 years with the same company, he deserved a bit of consideration.

MSSB would have none of that. A swift decision was made that Greg would either resign or be fired. He resigned, having never been fired from a job before. He thought for a few months and then he hired a lawyer. Notice I didn’t say that he “found” a lawyer. He didn’t find us. I’ve known Greg for almost as long as I’ve been in Florida. I coached his younger daughter in soccer. I was honored that he came to my firm for representation.

We started to work on the case. While we were investigating, MSSB realized what Greg knew all along — the branch manager must be fired. MSSB fired the manager for the very reason that Greg wanted to fire him. But it was too late, and corporations are not well-known for saying they’re sorry.

We filed the arbitration. MSSB answered the claim. We had four and a half days of hearings last September and November. We demonstrated that Greg had big damages. These weren’t made up numbers but real facts. People at Greg’s level within MSSB are well-compensated. The hearing was hard-fought. Opposing counsel was a good lawyer. And he had quite an impressive track record. From what I could tell, he didn’t lose very often.

The arbitration award showed up in our office late Friday afternoon. The arbitration panel awarded Greg $1,000,000. That’s a lot of zeroes. But Greg deserved it–and more. But most of all, Greg felt vindicated. He felt that the panel saw what he knew to be the case, that Morgan Stanley had obligations and didn’t fulfill them. That he had been mistreated. And he saw that, despite its many critics, at least this time the system worked.

Yes, winning feels better than losing. Anyone who denies that is lying. But winning for a client who you genuinely like and respect is a reward on a different level. We were glad that we got Greg some relief. We can’t unwind history, but can tell Greg that the panel agreed with him. And that’s what arbitration is all about.

Every case is different. Every arbitration panel is different. Every client is different. I could lose a big case tomorrow. But last Friday, when I was talking to Greg, I was glad to be a lawyer and glad to be his lawyer.

That’s the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

Now, on to today’s topic, the disclosure of a change to the privacy policies of Facebook and Instragram. PC Magazine just posted an opinion piece about this topic entitled “Facebook is Killing Instagram.” Big deal. It’s not like they’re hiding the cure for cancer somewhere on their servers.

Here’s what I’ve learned since I first took an onramp to the information superhighway. People like free stuff. Heck, I like free stuff. But people forget that free still costs money. Somewhere along the way, someone has to pay for the bits, bytes, flops and RAM. How is this done? Advertising. What attracts advertising? Users. What happens when the advertisers refuse to pay more money? The “free” service figures out new ways to generate revenue.

In Facebook’s case, did anyone step up and say “I’ll pay $25 so you won’t share my stuff”? Nope. They whined. Imagine this. If all of Facebook’s half-billion users kicked in a dollar that would be a half-billion dollars of revenue. $5? $2.5 billion in revenue. Then maybe they don’t have to sell that picture of you doing a kegstand five years ago. I can see the tagline “Don’t do a kegstand so you can get free beer. Get rid of cable.”

The same thing is happening with Google Apps and Gmail. Google figured out that there were lots of freeloaders, like me. Google has said no more freeloading on Google for Business for 10 users or less (for new people). So I am a grandfathered freeloader. Google has also taken away Exchange ActiveSync from Gmail and the free Google Apps accounts. Oh well. If I want EAS, then I will have to figure out how to come up with the $50 per user that Google wants. But I don’t need EAS. So I will remain a freeloader until Google makes it too unpleasant for me.

Speculation is that Google’s ActiveSync license was getting expensive. And that Google is mad that Microsoft is trying to make inroads in mobile phones. So it would stand to reason that Google is trying to discourage people from using Windows Phone while freeloading on Google’s Gmail system. Easy enough. Either the Gmail user pays up or moves on. Hence the migration to Outlook.com, Microsoft’s free email site (the much more sophisticated incarnation of Hotmail) Want it free? Go find it. And take your little dog, too.

Many moons ago it was said that “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” This is still true today. To keep all the twits, tweets, postings, photo uploads and general foolishness of the Internet running, money has to be made and spent. The companies need to do it some way. The business model of giving it away and never making money has been proven to be not profitable. Duh.

So make sure that, when crying, you don’t drip on your touchscreen device. You might short it out. And that repair will cost money.

That’s the view of one lawyer from Jupiter, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin. Have a safe and Happy New Year.