Clifford Chance has issued a warning to its lawyers after discovering that a significant number of them are leaving work just after 10pm, when they can catch a free cab home.
CC lawyers can charge up to £60 a day for a taxi when working late. However, in an email to associates leaked to RollOnFriday, management revealed that the firm had recorded a "disproportionately large" number of taxi journeys "where the taxi appears to have been ordered just before 22:00 for a pick up shortly after the cut off".
The email acknowledged that there was nothing to suggest the bookings contravened the firm's policies, but nonetheless management had decided to remind all staff to "apply judgement in interpreting and applying the policy guidelines".
Just in case anyone was left in any doubt, the email also reminded staff that "all journeys are recorded" and that management received "monthly reports that are reviewed to ensure that the policy has been followed".
"Apparently catching a taxi home from the office at 10pm constitutes taking the piss these days" a disgruntled associate told RollOnFriday (at 9.48pm, after watching the Olympics on his phone in the loos for an hour).
Tip Off ROF
CC lawyers can charge up to £60 a day for a taxi when working late. However, in an email to associates leaked to RollOnFriday, management revealed that the firm had recorded a "disproportionately large" number of taxi journeys "where the taxi appears to have been ordered just before 22:00 for a pick up shortly after the cut off".
CC, 22:01 on Wednesday |
The email acknowledged that there was nothing to suggest the bookings contravened the firm's policies, but nonetheless management had decided to remind all staff to "apply judgement in interpreting and applying the policy guidelines".
Just in case anyone was left in any doubt, the email also reminded staff that "all journeys are recorded" and that management received "monthly reports that are reviewed to ensure that the policy has been followed".
"Apparently catching a taxi home from the office at 10pm constitutes taking the piss these days" a disgruntled associate told RollOnFriday (at 9.48pm, after watching the Olympics on his phone in the loos for an hour).
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Anyone working to 10pm has billed probably 10-12 hours that day. That's 3-5 extra (poorly remunerated) hours that the firm gets at £500-600 per hour. PER HOUR.
A taxi home is a pittance.
Although I do know of one person (a padder - you could tell because his hours each day always added up to a nice round number - Monday 11 hours, Tuesday 12 hours, etc.) who worked until 10 then went for drinks with mates and then used the firm's taxi policy to get home to Surrey, as he'd met the 10pm entitlement time.
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Law firms should absorb these costs into their cost model - I don't pay a heating surcharge for work in Dec or Aircon fees for summer work. Yet....
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And equally laughs at the idea that lawyer's bonuses are "pitiful".
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1) At the moment the rate of tax on profits is less than 100%. It follows that just because an expense is tax deductible doesn't mean it is not somewhat an expense.
2) What you meant to say was that taxis taken on an irregular basis late at night is not a taxable benefit in kind for the employee.
@Anon 11:05
Yes proportionality is important. The email was entirely proportionate to the offence it remedied. It could have (accurately but hysterically) referred to a breach of trust and fraud.
@Anon 10:15
If a taxi home is a pittance why don't well paid professionals either pay for it themselves or apparently wait in the office until they can get it for free? Taxis are not a pittance.
@Anon 09:15
I would judge an individual not by inputs (hours after 6pm worked) but by outputs. The city working culture is made unpleasant by such judgmentalism
@Anon 08:45
The constraint on law firm profitability is almost always not the availability of staff to do the work but the availability and competition for the instructions for the work itself. Proof - every time a partner receives an instruction the work gets done.
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If a taxi home is a pittance why don't well paid professionals either pay for it themselves or apparently wait in the office until they can get it for free? Taxis are not a pittance. "
It's a pittance compared with the enormous pile that partners get.
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Erm... the client? *also taxi fees are not all billed to the client if you couldn't justify it, if there was an agreed fixed fee (which is the norm), or if there was a panel agreement on taxis.)
Never cease to be amazed by the number of city solicitors who believe in the first and second tenants of solicitor economics -
1) It all grows on the magic money tree.
2) Someone else earns more money than me = not fair.
To which we can now add the newly proposed third tenant from Anon 19:29 which neatly ties the first two tenants together.
3) It's OK if they can afford it.
This whole discussion panel is largely dominated by grown adults fuming resentfully about being asked -perfectly politely - to behave reasonably. In fact, I bet that more than half of you are now thinking - "well, define reasonably." And that, in itself, is a problem.
You are all more than welcome,
Anon 15:38 from accounts who earns less than half of what a solicitor with similar PQE would earn, accepts that sometimes life is tough like that, and spends a lot of time saving a disturbingly large proportion of you from either your own instinctively larcenous nature, your general commercial dimness, or a less than cunning admixture of the two like Anon 14:17.
PS: @Anon 17:58 - next time you are slumped bored rigid in front of your computer a few minutes before taxi happy hour, why don't you look at Income Tax (Earnings & Pensions) Act section 248 for an eerily close echo on what you clearly did not mean to say.
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Anon client (earlier on): if you don't like your advisors charging you for taxis when the fee-earner has only done a couple of hours' work on the file (as you shouldn't) when on earth don't you instruct a different firm? Rather suggests you're allowing yourself to be taken for a ride generally (no pun intended).
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