Although the relationship with attorneys is a common subject of expert gripe-fests and stories shared at expert gatherings, the number of empirical studies of that relationship is few. A series of such empirical pilot studies was performed by the Program in Psychiatry and the Law in the early 2000s by means of questionnaires administered to members of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law (AAPL) at workshops designed both to study and to discuss the expert-attorney relationship (1). This section summarizes those findings.

Senior AAPL members were nonrandomly surveyed about the use of fee agreements. Out of 20 responding members, only 55% used fee agreements; the remaining 45% relied on the retention letter, on large retainers, or on the attorney’s own contract. The subjects who used fee agreements revealed a wide variety of level of detail, information covered in the contract, and varying rates for varied activities.

Studies of billing issues of varying complexity revealed a number of provocative findings. One such finding was that subjects billed reasonably rationally to the proposed billing dilemmas. However, as the complexity of the activity increased, subjects tended to bill everyone for everything (2, see also Section IV).

A subsequent study of more peripheral and detailed billing issues, performed on a small population, revealed significant variance among billing strategies (3). For example, when asked about billing for work during a flight to a remote case, 85% of respondents subsumed that cost under the day rate for the whole travel, whereas 15% billed separately. Fifty-seven percent of respondents billed for thinking about a case and 43% did not. Finally, in a provocative example, respondents were given the situation in which materials but no retainer are sent, time passes, and the opposing side offers an instant retainer. Asked what the response would be, most respondents turned down the second attorney, but a number took the position: “No retainer, not retained.” Others suggested calling the original attorney and attempting to negotiate.