California | Civil Litigation
Legal Question
Is is usual for lawyers to charge clients for fixing their own drafting errors?
I recently was involved in a now settled law suit. My lawyers made a drafting error in the settle ment agreement in the ''Releases'' section. Basically they did a sloppy cut and paste job, didn't read what they pasted to see if it made sense, and the result was that I had to perform my part of the bargain and my opponent didn't have to do anything to be released. I (the client) caught the error, just before we were to sign the agreement, told my lawyer, who agreed it was a good catch, and he had to have it fixed. I wondered at the time if they were going to try to bill me for their sloppy drafting and for the time that it took to fix the error. And as it turns out, they have billed me for it. So my question: Is it usual for a client to have to foot the bill to repair an error made by the lawyers? I would have thought they would have been too embarrassed to charge me, but that's clearly not the case.
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