Thanks everyone, this is good feedback with well presented perspectives.
Flu, you should never have been charged for that paralegal’s errors. That sucks. I say this as a paralegal — sure, I’ve made errors, but our clients have never been billed for them. (I’m mostly out of the billing game now, thank god, but my rate is an astounding $280 an hour.)
You’re right that there is a psychological toll to caring about $400, especially considering that it’s rather less than one monthly installment of my new property tax bill. But man, this guy is a bully and it gets my goat. (He seriously sent another good tenant with five years under his belt a bill from the tailor because the tenant’s dog jumped on the landlord and put a hole in landlord’s jacket.)
I also misspoke — the rate he’s charging is $175 an hour. I assume it’s his paralegal’s rate for performing paralegal services, or some hybrid figure that they came up with, because the entries are labeled “landlord name/paralegal name).
no_such_reality, I’d agree $175 would be very reasonable for competently performed legal services. That is not what this landlord is providing. He’s not even performing his landlord duties competently. If Lebron James is my landlord, does he get to charge me $1,650 for his .2 email to tell the leasing agent that the repairs have been completed? Because his professional hourly rate is $8,200 and because he could have been polishing his ring instead of writing that email?
I think some charge for this time is allowed under the relevant code section, but I also believe the rate has to be “reasonable.” My mind would be blown if the standard for “reasonable” turned out to be “what wealthy landowners owners make at their professional day jobs.”
Also, this is on top of $500+ in (inadequately documented) leasing agent and cleaning/repair fees.
I think I will send the demand letter and propose a rate of $25 an hour for those times entries. Mostly because I think people who work should be paid a living wage and his legal assistant has x years experience (implementing her boss’ poor property management practices). Not that it goes into her pocket, but $25 an hour for that seems fair to me.
