21st Century Ethics Q&A: Can You Bill Clients for A Virtual Receptionist?
From Lawyerist Lab, a commenter asks whether he can charge clients for costs associated with an outsourced answering service – in his case, Ruby Receptionists. The answer – probably not.
Long before the virtual era,ABA Formal Opinion 93-379 took the position that lawyers could not ethically bill clients for costs traditionally classified as overhead – such as the cost of maintaining a law library or malpractice insurance. This principle does not change where overhead services are outsourced, as explained in a Michigan opinion, RI-363 that I blogged about here:
[A firm] may not ethically convert services that are traditionally understood to be part of a law firm’s overhead to case costs chargeable to the client by transferring the work to a separate entity whether or not that entity is wholly owned by a shareholder in the law firm.
As a recent ABA Ethics Tip observed, the definition of overhead changes can change over time. Once upon a time, firms billed clients for LEXIS usage, but today, the majority view is that electronic research costs are no different from the law library which is treated as overhead. Likewise, whereas a legal secretary’s tasks – word-processing, answering phones or opening mail – were viewed as overhead and not billed to clients, today’s legal secretary may actually be called a “legal assistant,” responsible for client intake or compiling trial exhibits, both of which are tasks that are legal in nature and can be directly assigned to a client.
Even so, at most law firms, the role of receptionist hasn’t much changed. Receptionists support the law firm generally, rather than any specific client individually. Whether a lawyer employs a receptionist or uses an outsourced answering service, the task of answering phones is one that supports the firm generally rather than any individual client. Lawyers concerned about covering the cost of outsourced answering services have an ethical alternative: they can raise their rates to all clients to cover any additional overhead charges.