Lawyer sends £1.5 million bill for one hour's work

dr. what · Post by **dr. what** » 2004-10-19 12:00am

""The first thing to do is to kill all the lawyers." ~ William Shakespeare

Lawyer sends £1.5m bill for one hour's work

A self-employed German who earns just £12,000 pounds a year has been landed with a £1.5 million pound legal bill after asking a lawyer to do a few minutes work.

The man asked the lawyer to help him sort out a taxman's mistake.

The lawyer took just one hour to sort out the mix-up where the local taxman had sent the self employed man a bill for nearly £200 million pounds on his £12,000 pound a year earnings.

But under German law, lawyers are entitled to a certain percentage of the reduction if their action results in a reduction in the tax bill, and the man was landed with a one-and-a-half million pound bill for the lawyers work.

A spokesman for the court in Bonn said the law was clear that the lawyer will get the money, but it remains unclear who will have to pay it.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2004-10-19 11:03am

now thats funny

can I be a german lawyer? a buddy of mine in the irs could go crazy.

yes, we're billing you 10 billion dollars. talen, plz argue it.

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2004-10-19 11:30am

It may be legal under German law, but for a lawyer to actually charge that much for an hour's work straightening up a erroneous tax bill for a client who only makes 12k per year is contemptible.

And lawyers wonder why the legal profession is held in such contempt.

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-10-19 11:43am

The taxman fucked up the bill, and the lawyer now wants to get payed based on the fuckup he fixed? What the fuck?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-19 11:48am

God I hate law, it's boring as fuck and is the only truly legal way to screw civilisation as well as save it.

dr. what · Post by **dr. what** » 2004-10-19 12:03pm

Glocksman wrote:It may be legal under German law, but for a lawyer to actually charge that much for an hour's work straightening up a erroneous tax bill for a client who only makes 12k per year is contemptible.

And lawyers wonder why the legal profession is held in such contempt.

Very contemptible, I agree.

But you have to admit--very, very ballsy--and the worse part is--lawyer is apparently well within his rights to ask for that amount.

Interestingly--they seem to be having trouble figuring out exactly who to stick that bill to. Man--are there going to be some angry German taxpayers soon.....

BoredShirtless · Post by **BoredShirtless** » 2004-10-19 12:14pm

dr. what wrote:
Glocksman wrote:It may be legal under German law, but for a lawyer to actually charge that much for an hour's work straightening up a erroneous tax bill for a client who only makes 12k per year is contemptible.

And lawyers wonder why the legal profession is held in such contempt.
Very contemptible, I agree.

But you have to admit--very, very ballsy--and the worse part is--lawyer is apparently well within his rights to ask for that amount.

Interestingly--they seem to be having trouble figuring out exactly who to stick that bill to. Man--are there going to be some angry German taxpayers soon.....

Of course it's gonna get dismissed. As if anybody is gonna pay for this shitty little loophole.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2004-10-19 12:27pm

Here's a question, how do you not ask "how much is this going to cost me?" When asking someone to do some professional work for you? Especially a lawyer!

On the other hand, this is clearly a case of a law that just wasn't thought through. I think we don't need politicians making our laws so much as them making some general plan like architects and having some group acting like engineers make sure that the law actually works right. Now if only someone could take my analogy and figure out how to mirror it in the real world. Now what I don't know is whether the above is a flash of insight or just mindless rambling.

Post by **Edi** » 2004-10-19 01:08pm

Looks like the German law does not have the kind of safety clauses that exist in Finnish law to prevent exactly this (our laws are very much based on he Germanic tradition of law, because we have kept the same legal system Sweden has and the roots of that are in Germany. That kind of scumfuckery would not be possible here. There is a specific prohibition against exorbitant (compared to the real value of the case) fees and the law has a clause that allows the Judge discretion over lots of things. Were this here, the lawyer would see his requested fee slashed by at least five zeroes...

Edi

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-10-19 01:38pm

The only other people that can pull this extortion off are consultants who ask for hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to tell you what you already bloody well know.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-10-19 05:45pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:The only other people that can pull this extortion off are consultants who ask for hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to tell you what you already bloody well know.

But they do it with shiny powerpoint presentations and in a strange language

dummnutzer · Post by **dummnutzer** » 2004-10-19 06:18pm

Relax.

Have compassion with the German legal profession, please.

We earn much less than our US colleagues. The Brits can wear whigs. The Italians have cooler robes. We have no court TV. We also lack juries, so we have to do legal work instead of appealing to human stupidity.

This lawyer had to deal with the German Tax Code. Nothing is more dangerous to Your mental health than the ever-changing German Tax law. I am a Vollljurist, and I don´t do my own taxes ...

Our system of monetary compensation (BRaGO) tends to be quite modest and has not be updated for many years. MDs make more than lawyers in Germany!

If this story is true, and nobody talked about it today, than it is more a statistical anomaly than a true picture of the legal situation in Germany.