CBA Record May-June 2025

would have happened if it had gone the other way around. I mean no disrespect to Ms. Robinson; I have always found her to be scrupulously honest. But she is trust ing. Not as curious. “If she had reviewed pre-bills on files that she had with Mr. Martin, she would probably have looked only at her time entries. “With most lawyers, that should have been appropriate.” Ben paused for a moment. “Mr. Martin insisted that all client correspondence be over his signature; he made me sit with him and pass him notes as necessary whenever he talked to a client on the phone about matters I was han dling. But I didn’t mind. His name was on the door, and he signed my checks. Render unto Caesar, I say. “And, in these early days, it made sense that he would have many time entries on our joint files. I reviewed his entries, you see, because I wanted to know how this should be done. I had hopes—expec tations even—that I might be in this position some day with my own subor dinate. Mr. Martin needed to see what I was doing, and whether I was doing it well. Sometimes I had to cut my own time entries, or rewrite them, or both, to accommodate his time entries. Clients dislike paying for services once, Judge; they get positively apoplectic if they feel they are being billed twice for the exact same service. “But, eventually, after several months, I had less and less contact with Mr. Martin on our joint files. He left me pretty much alone, and I didn’t really mind that either. I knew what I was doing, and I was doing it well. He still signed all the client letters and took all the client calls. But clients don’t call to chew the fat when they’re being billed by the hour; I was increas ingly thorough in my reporting, so clients hardly ever called on matters I handled. That was a good thing. “But Mr. Martin’s time entries on my files did not diminish proportionately to

the lessened supervision. He made entries on files he hadn’t seen since intake; many of these were obviously unrelated to the actual matter being handled. I cut a couple of the most egregious examples from one pre-bill, figuring maybe he’d gotten the file numbers mixed up on his timesheet. “I got chewed out for my troubles. Don’t you dare cut my time, he told me. Ever . I took it as a threat. Because it was a threat. “This happened late one Friday. I remember because it was my oldest child’s second birthday party, and I was late. He told me to wait for him in his office, which I did, waiting there alone—he left me there by myself—until everyone else in the firm had gone home. Then he came back in his office and dropped that on me. “So, Mr. Martin got to write fiction. And I—I who had wanted to write fic tion—was made into an editor .” Ben spat out that word, too. “I still had to work as many hours as always to keep my cases current, plus extra hours to rewrite Martin’s time entries. As a reward, I got to cut my own billables, some

months by a third or more, to make up for his bullshit add-ons. I protected the clients; they got billed what they would have been billed without his nonsense. I protected the firm. I even protected Mr. Martin from himself. “He must have known what I was doing, and why. But he began blasting me for declining production in front of the entire office at every firm meeting. He called me lazy. Everyone believed him. He threatened to fire me. It came down to him or me—” The judge interrupted Ben. “You could have quit.” “Maybe. But I know nothing about hardware, Judge, and all the Sears stores have closed.” He glanced at the remain ing pages of his statement, then put them down. “Do what you must,” he said.

Jack Leyhane is recently retired from the active practice of law and is a certified mediator, pub lished legal author, and award-winning blogger at “For What It’s Worth.”

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