# Sloppy work from expensive professionals



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

These days I'm dealing with lawyers and accountants. International tax accountants charging me $300/hour for tax preparation and advice, and lawyers (at work) at $400/hour+

I keep being disappointed with their attention to detail. For instance last year the tax accountants, preparing info about my TFSA, misinterpreted the contents of account statements. It took me just 15 minutes to notice this on my first reading of the documents. I also previously corrected their misunderstanding of some international tax law.

More recently, the $400/hour attorneys sent our company material, and it took me just 5 minutes reading the documents to discover that they were proposing an action that is clearly illegal. When I pointed it out they immediately apologized -- this was almost a beginner's mistake.

It all makes me really disappointed with lawyers and accountants. Why am I able to find so many mistakes in just a couple MINUTES of time reviewing the material prepared by these so-called professionals? Why do they all seem to be so sloppy and imprecise? I'm certainly no genius. I just *read* material and am reasonably well educated. In fact I only had about 4 hours of sleep last night and am basically a zombie today when I caught this huge mistake from the lawyers.

Or am I being too hard on them? After all they bring their knowledge of rules and systems, and expertise in the big picture. Maybe the kind of mistakes I'm catching are natural and unavoidable. And a big reason we hire these people is for the liability protection... not necessarily because they're right, but because it shields us from liability.

Thoughts? Am I too hard on these people? Or are they in fact over-priced, worthless screw-ups?


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## lonewolf (Jun 12, 2012)

How do you tell the difference between a good lawyer & a great lawyer ?

A good one knows the law, A great one knows the judge


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## wendi1 (Oct 2, 2013)

Do they get paid for the time they spend revising the documents?

There are good ones out there. You just haven't found them yet.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I should add that I've been pretty happy with my tax accountant so far. They certainly knew things that I did not know... and their guidance was helpful. They pointed me in the right direction and have been easy to work with so far.

I don't like finding mistakes in their work, but without their advice I'd be much worse off than I am right now.

The mistakes I noticed last year I think had to do with the apprentice or assistant who was preparing that material. I hate that part of it ...paying for the professional, and getting their amateur assistant's output. Lawyers do LOTS of this too.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

I spent quite a bit of time in the past 18 months working with management consultants. I am horrified by how much the company is paying for a bunch of know-nothing incompetents (they accidentally shared their screen with me showing their rate card and the budget for a 3 month project I was asked to help with). One of their $350/hour analysts made an error in quantifying the amount of space used by the company in various parts of the country. They were off by 1,000,000 times in their figures (trillions instead of millions). I thought it was a typo, said analyst could not be persuaded that the company did not occupy >1% of the area of Canada.

I now realize that House of Lies is not that much of an exaggeration...


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Last year some lawyers our company deals with goofed, and accidentally sent me a competitor's contract, including dollar figures.

Sometimes I think I'm being "punked" or something. What a ****-show. Why do I work so damned hard? Why do I even bother with attention to detail? It only makes me look anal and alienates me from average people, who honestly don't give a **** what they're doing.


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

james4beach said:


> Last year some lawyers our company deals with goofed, and accidentally sent me a competitor's contract, including dollar figures.
> 
> Sometimes I think I'm being "punked" or something. What a ****-show. Why do I work so damned hard? Why do I even bother with attention to detail? It only makes me look anal and alienates me from average people, who honestly don't give a **** what they're doing.


Yeah like others have said, they are more for the general direction. Since they handle so many cases at the same time, the actual document drafting are usually left to assistants who are pretty much new. 

For example, I tell my accountant all my current stuff and him being someone with his specialty tells me how to best save taxes. Then once your assets cross certain threshold to make it profitable, he suggest another strategy. Up to you to execute it though.

In other instances, we found out that lawyers in general are the biggest source of leaks of company information.


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## RCB (Jan 11, 2014)

I worked for an accounting partnership 30 years ago, doing books and payroll for some of their clients. I was shocked to learn that almost everything was done by in-office accounting students, paid well below my low salary. Not much above minimum wage, actually. One of the accountants was only in the office for client meetings.

Same for lawyers, in my experience, although my family lawyer (RE and estates) works for his money, and errors never make it to me. Two others I've been forced to use have had work riddled with errors that I've caught, and both were higher priced.

It's disheartening, especially since my lawyer will likely be retiring soon.


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## Brian K (Jan 29, 2011)

+1 james...
I used to work for a company that had to come up with a Drug and Alcohol Policy. It was a longish document but in one section the final wording that got circulated was "We strongly encourage the moderate consumption of alcohol". I couldn't believe it! I didn't drink, but now I was being strongly encouraged to drink moderately. This was vetted by the HR department, their lawyers, and was sent out by the company president. Also the grammar and structure in the rest of the document was horrible. (Of course they meant "if you must drink, please do so in moderation). The point is that no one really reads anything anymore but expect that others have done their jobs so they just pass things off. I also find reading something on a piece of paper is much clearer than reading it on a computer screen - but I'm an old fart now.


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## 319905 (Mar 7, 2016)

Fwiw ... my engineering buddies who've been in the business for awhile take on such services based on word of mouth ... they share information when it comes to this and so reduce risk; if a person is operating on their own, meaning taking on these services on their own, there's greater risk ... my opinion. Maybe reduce risk through consultation with peers ...


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## peterk (May 16, 2010)

What do you expect? Society is going into cultural, intellectual and ethical decay at all levels, including in all businesses, and all universities, even professional programs.

Standards are falling. In the past maybe only 5-10% of intellectually and ethically deficient people would be able to scam their way through difficult professional schools and into important positions in society, mainly due to nepotism. These days the number is probably closer to 30-40% who have severe deficiencies in some way, but through a variety of official "excuses" accepted by the bureaucracy of said institutions, are allowed to be progressed through to fulfill careers as professionals, managers, professors, ministers, and any other highly lauded position of influence in our society.

Once a critical mass of incompetents are reached, the remaining 60-70% of competent people become demotivated by what they see. They stop holding their standards to the high level that they would prefer, as all they ever get is grief and no reward for doing so.


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## Numbersman61 (Jan 26, 2015)

peterk said:


> What do you expect? Society is going into cultural, intellectual and ethical decay at all levels, including in all businesses, and all universities, even professional programs.
> 
> Standards are falling. In the past maybe only 5-10% of intellectually and ethically deficient people would be able to scam their way through difficult professional schools and into important positions in society, mainly due to nepotism. These days the number is probably closer to 30-40% who have severe deficiencies in some way, but through a variety of official "excuses" accepted by the bureaucracy of said institutions, are allowed to be progressed through to fulfill careers as professionals, managers, professors, ministers, and any other highly lauded position of influence in our society.
> 
> Once a critical mass of incompetents are reached, the remaining 60-70% of competent people become demotivated by what they see. They stop holding their standards to the high level that they would prefer, as all they ever get is grief and no reward for doing so.


In my business career, I dealt with many professionals - engineers, accountants, lawyers, corporate finance professionals, and bankers. I expected quality work and the incompetents were swiftly replaced. If you want to succeed in business, you have to move quickly.


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## lonewolf (Jun 12, 2012)

andrewf said:


> I spent quite a bit of time in the past 18 months working with management consultants. I am horrified by how much the company is paying for a bunch of know-nothing incompetents (they accidentally shared their screen with me showing their rate card and the budget for a 3 month project I was asked to help with). One of their $350/hour analysts made an error in quantifying the amount of space used by the company in various parts of the country. They were off by 1,000,000 times in their figures (trillions instead of millions). I thought it was a typo, said analyst could not be persuaded that the company did not occupy >1% of the area of Canada.
> 
> I now realize that House of Lies is not that much of an exaggeration...


 They pay to bring people in when most cases the employees have a better understanding of how the company could be run better. They have skin in the game the employees & management should work together. Instead of paying the consultants the money would be more productive using it as an incentive for employees to make the business run better instead of the consultants. Employees feel more important make more money & will have a better attitude plus plus. Bringing in consultants is often viewed as an insult to the workers.


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

I personally find your average consultant the worst. The number of times I've had to school a $700 a day consultant on basic ecology is astounding. I'm gob smacked that the government thinks it's cheaper in the long run to hire consultants rather than build in-house well trained capacity.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

lonewolf said:


> How do you tell the difference between a good lawyer & a great lawyer ?
> 
> A good one knows the law, A great one knows the judge


In most law, if you're in front of a judge you've already lost.
A good lawyer has things set up that it's pointless to even go that far.


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## Brian K (Jan 29, 2011)

+++100


lonewolf said:


> They pay to bring people in when most cases the employees have a better understanding of how the company could be run better. They have skin in the game the employees & management should work together. Instead of paying the consultants the money would be more productive using it as an incentive for employees to make the business run better instead of the consultants. Employees feel more important make more money & will have a better attitude plus plus. Bringing in consultants is often viewed as an insult to the workers.


But contractors are MUCH easier to layoff or punt and that is why they are semi preferred and is the 'employee de jour' these days. In Alberta now, the numbers of unemployed in reports are only 'real' employees that have been laid off. Contractors are not in that head count. But no one talks about that and it is MUCH higher. Yeah I know - poor Albertans but included in that mix are all those Eastern contract employees who got flown out to Alberta for a rotational work who ended up paying tax in their home province which has also stopped - but I digress.... Try laying off an employee and severance as well as wrongful dismissal lawsuits kick in. Brought to you by too many lawyers or people thinking they are doing better work than they really are. It is REALLY tough to get rid of an incompetent employee these days. Perhaps this stems from cuddling our kids too much and keeping their self esteem high and not letting them learn that sometimes their work just doesn't cut the mustard.

I fully agree full time employees have skin in the game and are much more likely (but no guarantee) to produce better results, but the MBA's running the companies now don't care about that and want easily disposed of people (with no severance or pensions to deal with) - and they get apathy and poor designs in return. I worked for a Pipeline company as both engineering and operations manager and saw that shortsighted thought process deliver poor results. Also rather than use older, experienced employees as mentors, they were 'encouraged' to GET OUT! So companies get to make the same mistakes over and over again. A sad state.


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## LBCfan (Jan 13, 2011)

I know, it's really tough when I see lawyers doing things I wouldn't. It hurts when accountants want me to declare ALL my income. It really pisses me off when a mechanic suggests replacing a bad part. HeZeus, don't they know I'm a lot smarter than they are. Why do I pay them, anyway.


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## Brian K (Jan 29, 2011)

I heard a lawyer once say "It doesn't matter if it's ethical, as long as it's legal". Sums it up nicely.


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

Brian K said:


> +++100
> 
> 
> But contractors are MUCH easier to layoff or punt and that is why they are semi preferred and is the 'employee de jour' these days. In Alberta now, the numbers of unemployed in reports are only 'real' employees that have been laid off. Contractors are not in that head count. But no one talks about that and it is MUCH higher. Yeah I know - poor Albertans but included in that mix are all those Eastern contract employees who got flown out to Alberta for a rotational work who ended up paying tax in their home province which has also stopped - but I digress.... Try laying off an employee and severance as well as wrongful dismissal lawsuits kick in. Brought to you by too many lawyers or people thinking they are doing better work than they really are. It is REALLY tough to get rid of an incompetent employee these days. Perhaps this stems from cuddling our kids too much and keeping their self esteem high and not letting them learn that sometimes their work just doesn't cut the mustard.
> ...


I find that ego clashing are the cause. Most owners will have a ready story of one employee that causes too much trouble. Once an employee know that they cannot readily be fired, they pull off a lot of weird stuff. Like getting into an accident per month and have to call in sick from the hospital. SO it's easier to deal with contractors that can be dismissed right away.


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## Brian K (Jan 29, 2011)

Yes - they learn to play the system in what ever format they can - like getting EI yearly for a few months work, regularly going on Short Term Disability and magically return to work cured only to do it again the next year, thinking that 'sick time' is their God given right, saying that their drug problem is somehow the companies problem because for some reason now it is a disability. One VP that I worked for needed a knee replacement and of course that was on "company time" as sick time, because he wanted to save his vacation for the summer. When did vacation time always mean fun in the sun and not just time off with pay? And HR departments were busy coming up with phrases like "Work Life Balance" and my perception was there was way too much balance going on and not nearly enough work. And it is so true that 90% of your time is spent on 10% of the staff. I had one Engineer once say to me when asked to work on a particular project "I'd rather not do that". I nearly fell off my chair. I'm starting to sound like the old guys I used to work for and now I realize why they were happy to retire.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

none said:


> I personally find your average consultant the worst....
> I'm gob smacked that the government thinks it's cheaper in the long run to hire consultants rather than build in-house well trained capacity.


OTOH ... I had a similar reaction to the private execs that supposedly would be more efficient. 

The employee suggestion of high school students to do the Lan wiring at much less than employee wages was deemed too expensive.

Paying electricians four or more times as much was great as there was no benefits to pay. Problem was that half our day went into troubleshooting spotty connections or too long lines. Then more OT to get the electricians to fix it. 


It seems that management theory is more the problem than private or public.


Cheers


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

Brian K said:


> ... I fully agree full time employees have skin in the game and are much more likely (but no guarantee) to produce better results, but the MBA's running the companies now don't care about that ...


Generally agree ... except I was seeing this behavior in the late '90s. No real difference since.

Same time that the local school board was taking flak for the same "spend it or lose it" budget system *every private company * I have worked for has used ... with lots of similar wasted $$$.


Cheers


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

none said:


> I personally find your average consultant the worst. The number of times I've had to school a $700 a day consultant on basic ecology is astounding. I'm gob smacked that the government thinks it's cheaper in the long run to hire consultants rather than build in-house well trained capacity.


I'm not sure how it works in Canada, but I suspect it's similar to the United States, where Congress sets limits on the number of employees each agency can hire, but then gives them far more work and responsibilities than that number of staff can accomplish. So government agencies are forced to hire contractors in order to fulfill their mandated responsibilities, because taxpayers want to limit the size of government but they still want laws to be enforced and legislatively mandated programs to be run.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

james4beach said:


> Or am I being too hard on them? After all they bring their knowledge of rules and systems, and expertise in the big picture. Maybe the kind of mistakes I'm catching are natural and unavoidable. And a big reason we hire these people is for the liability protection... not necessarily because they're right, but because it shields us from liability.


If you want perfection, you need to do business with machines, not people. People are humans, and humans by definition make mistakes. Even machines are no guarantee of perfection because machines are designed...by humans.

Tax accountants and lawyers are busy people, and tax accountants are really busy around this time of year. My accountant works 7 days a week right now, and typically 12-14 hours a day, as do many of his colleagues in the firm. They have junior staff to help them, but there's no way people working under those conditions are going to catch every little error, no matter how rigorous their QA procedures. In fact the basic errors are likely to be more common, because they're probably focusing on getting the complicated stuff right and might not even notice more basic problems. I see this in my own work sometimes.


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## lonewolf (Jun 12, 2012)

brad said:


> I'm not sure how it works in Canada, but I suspect it's similar to the United States, where Congress sets limits on the number of employees each agency can hire, but then gives them far more work and responsibilities than that number of staff can accomplish. So government agencies are forced to hire contractors in order to fulfill their mandated responsibilities, because taxpayers want to limit the size of government but they still want laws to be enforced and legislatively mandated programs to be run.


 In the 1970s Canada had wage & price controls to combat inflation was the thinking. This caused all kinds of crazy benefit programs to attract workers to jobs. Benefits tax payers cant afford to pay anymore.

I think it was Detroit where for every policeman working they have to pay for 3 one working 2 retired demographics are getting worse with less working more retired. Alberta is cutting lots of jobs cant afford to pay workers as this is happening they are raising minimum wage


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

brad said:


> I'm not sure how it works in Canada, but I suspect it's similar to the United States, where Congress sets limits on the number of employees each agency can hire, but then gives them far more work and responsibilities than that number of staff can accomplish. So government agencies are forced to hire contractors in order to fulfill their mandated responsibilities, because taxpayers want to limit the size of government but they still want laws to be enforced and legislatively mandated programs to be run.


No set limits that I am aware off in gov't, beyond what the gov't of the day decides to set.

The explanation by the executives at the private company I worked at was that benefits for full time employees were too much plus too costly to fire the full time employee. Problem was ... there was a decades worth of data to show an employee was needed and that the cost of the consultants was running much higher for years.

When the management types are trained the same way ... is it really a surprise that both gov't and private corps are operating the same way?


Cheers


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## Prospector (Jul 25, 2014)

My experience in Engineering is that many clients misunderstand the operations of a firm. They believe as teh OP stated that they have hired an engineer for $XXX an hour to solve their problems. 

If they look at the invoice, they will see that the bulk of the work was done by EITs, and administrative assistants. The engineer reviewed the work of others, then stamped it, signed it and sent it out. My experience is that within the firm, files may move between engineers depending on workload/expertise, and that some engineers are more thorough than others in reviewing the work of staff. 

The busiest engineers - partners and owners - tend to be the least concerned with details like decimal points and punctuation... which can lead to big problems down the line.


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## Pluto (Sep 12, 2013)

What do you call 10 lawyers up to their neck in cement?

Not enough cement.

Better Call Saul. lol


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## Brian K (Jan 29, 2011)

A friend once said the 3 phases of a Corporation are:
1) Build by technical people
2) run (into the ground) by accountants
3) Shut down by lawyers

Seems pretty much bang on to me.


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