alt Hacker NewsThe difference is that lawyers typically charge by the hour. Software is not sold based on how long it took to create.
So, if a lawyer bills $1000 for "10 seconds of work", it smells fraudulent.
If $1000 was a flat rate, then it's similar to software: you're purchasing some IP and passing off legal liability to the lawyer. How long the lawyer spent on it doesn't matter.
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otterley • today at 5:02 AM
Why would it be fraudulent if the fee agreement disclosed it?
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In the lawyer's case one might argue that it's just a time quantization inaccuracy. There's no smaller unit of time than an hour for them.
One can argue that there should be, but billing in 10 second increments might also be a bit much to ask.
One would hope that they would at least aggregate multiple smaller-than-resolution time blocks into one before billing though. (Five documents over the course of a week ends up costing the same)