In the legal profession, of course!!!! The Volokh Conspiracy [dated 22 January 2008] relates this tale of billable hours in Canada:
Lawyer Allegedly Bills Client for 30 Hours in One Day:
CBC News reports this; the lawyer is a Mobina Jaffer, member of the Canadian Senate. Nor does this seem like a timekeeping glitch, or some unusual accounting system agreed on with the client:
Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer is under investigation by the Law Society of British Columbia for allegedly overbilling one of her legal clients, including charging for 30 hours of work in a single day, CBC News has learned....
Jaffer has been called before the law society to account for more than $6 million in legal bills charged to her former client, a Catholic missionary order known as the Oblates of Mary Immaculate....
The Oblates, whose B.C. headquarters are based in New Westminster, fired Jaffer and her son, Azool Jaffer-Jeraj, three years ago after receiving bills of $6.7 million. They had hired the Jaffers to defend them against dozens of claims of abuse in residential schools....
The Jaffers settled the lawsuit out of court in December; however, the law society said the case still requires an investigation....
The accounts obtained by the CBC also showed that Jaffer's son once billed for 32.4 hours in a day, at the end of a week in which he claimed an average of 20 hours of work a day....
[B]efore settling with the Oblates, both Jaffer and her son were examined under oath. Jaffer said then that billing for more than 24 hours a day was "an error." ...
"We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth." - Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)
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