Margaret Cleary is a paralegal who works for a law firm that requires her to bill clients seven hours a day. One of Margaret’s assignments was to prepare interrogatories on a real estate case. She entered the client’s number, files name, file number, and date on her time sheet and went to the file room to retrieve the file. The file was not there. She spent 1.5 hours looking for the file, which was in the lawyer’s brief case; that was in court on another matter. If Margaret does not bill for that time, those 1.5 hours are lost time and she must stay an extra 1.5 hours to make them up.
a. How should Margaret bill this time?
b. If you were Margaret and the supervising attorney told you to bill the client for the time, what would you do?
c. If you were the law firm administrator, how would you remedy this situation?