Another Law Firm Loses Big to Employee Larceny — Is Yours Next?

May 13th, 2010 | By David Sorensen

The EQ has blogged a number of times about employee theft from law firms. Why do lawyers never seem to learn? If you interviewed these firms no doubt you would find intelligent, hard working people shocked that the theft occurred, and they’d probably say something along the cliched lines of “But he/she seemd so nice/trustworthy/loyal/normal”. Stop me if you’ve heard all this before right? But it does not seem to stop.

And if your firm does not have appropriate systems in place to stop it, you might be lucky just to lose a bundle of money. If you lose client account funds, you could be facing a “used-to-be our client” situation, a malpractice suit, or even a disciplinary suit.

The Chicago Sun-Times today reports that the Kelly, Olson, Michod, DeHaan & Richter firm’s ”long-time” office manager wrote 234 checks to herself between 2002 and 2009 totaling nearly $1 million. And she might have escaped detection had she not been on vacation when one of the firm checks bounced!

Here is the link to the story: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2265912,lawfirm-manager-theft-charge-051210.article

Do you have procedures in place so your law firm does not become the next news story like this one?

And a tip: an outside “audit” of your firm’s management procedures and practices will probably serve you better in the long run than doing it yourself. You never know what might happen if someone with something to hide gets to run that review . . .

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