The City County Observer has obtained the Legal Services Contracts executed between the City of Evansville and the Law firm that was selected to take care of the City’s legal issues for 2011.
One of the contracts, linked below as the Independent Contractors Agreement is very straight forward with respect to duties and compensation. This contract calls for a total of flat fees paid monthly that adds up to $213,148 paid in equal monthly installments of $17,762 for the page of services listed in the appendix.
The second contract is an open ended contract to be billed at $150 per hour for other tasks and expenses set forth in the agreement. No where in this contract is it specified that Paralegal services are to be billed at a rate of $95.00 per hour. No rate whatsoever is specified for paralegal services yet legal support is mentioned beneath the section that states $150 per hour. As such it would appear that the City’s law firm is actually under-billing for paralegal services at $95 per hour with respect to what would be admissible under the terms of the contract.
There is no upper limit imposed on the number of hours that can be billed at the $150 per hour rate.
In my opinion, this is very shoddy legal work. You could drive a Mack Truck through the holes in these two agreements. Someone wrote these very quickly. Was this a no-bid contract ? I’ll bet a lot of lawyers in town who visit this site are laughing in their beer. Not specifying the rates for the various levels of staff (Partner, Associate, Paralegal) is a cardinal sin, in my view. I have nothing against this law firm, but these contracts blow. Whoever signed them on the part of the city should be ashamed, doesn’t even describe how the two agreements interact with one another. Rookies.
What bothers me is the undisclosed sum that was kicked back from the law firm to Whiney-zipple and his cronies in the Socialist-Democratic Party. Don’t think for one second that Whiney intended to make a gift of the entire sum of that contract to shysters in that well-connected “lucky” law firm. By my count there are only two high-powered law firms in this town. The rest are nothing more than ambulance chasers. It is ridiculous to think that the guys at the top of the heap would stoop to sleazy deals with Whiney, so who knows how much of the taxpayers’ money paying for political advertisements, paid for by sleazy, corrupt lawyers.
Nobody is checking on the work actually being performed. This should have been bid on with specifications as to expected experience.
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