A recent NJ Today story, “State Comptroller Finds Local Governments are Wasting Money on Improper Legal Fees,” reports that the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) review of five local governments found repeated waste of taxpayer dollars on excessive or improper payment for legal services, including one town that paid a salary for an attorney with no job duties at all.  The findings are part of a 38-page report (pdf) that highlights a series of deficiencies in the local governments’ oversight of the lawyers they hire.

For example, OSC found that two of the local governments paid their legal counsel at hourly rates for routine clerical and administrative work that should have been free of charge under the attorney’s contract.  Another local government paid 30 different attorneys from the same law firm to provide legal services in a single year.  OSC’s review of the legal invoices, meanwhile, identified a series of billing errors that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.  Several of the local governments acknowledged that they had not been conducting a substantive review of the legal bills they received and paid. 

OSC’s report – which focused on legal services provided to North Bergen Township, West New York, Medford Township, the Freehold Regional High School District and the Plainfield Public Schools – also includes an extensive checklist of best practices for local governments to follow when engaging and managing legal counsel.  The checklist, which was sent to every local municipality and school district in the state, was developed after research of prevailing party billing practices and review of a wide variety of published authorities.

“We took this project to develop guidance that local governments could consult when contracting with outside counsel and managing their legal departments,” State Comptroller Matthew Boxer said.  “What we found were repeated failures to review legal bills and manage legal contracts in a way that looks out for taxpayers.  Public officials need to scrutinize their legal bills as if they were paying for them out of their own pocket, otherwise taxpayers are going to get ripped off.”