Are lawyers entitled to add a reasonable profit premium to Logicoceans charges?
When a lawyer bills the client for the cost of outsourced legal support services as a direct expense (or disbursement), the lawyer can only charge the client for the actual cost of such services plus the firms reasonable overhead involved with managing the outsourcing relationship. Such reasonable overhead, amongst other things, could include fees associated with the time spent by the firm in delegating the work to the outside service provider and for supervising and reviewing their work product, provided that the basis of such costs are communicated to the client. However, if the cost of such services are not directly billed to the client but are included in the attorneys legal services, the attorney could charge a premium, provided that the attorney vouches for the work of the overseas attorney as his or her own work and the total fees charged are reasonable. In such a situation, the attorney is using the outside service providers work product in assisting the attorney in rendering l
