Mobile Lawyer

Laughing at the peons

Maybe attorney Lee Smolen has a fetish for taxi cabs and is too ashamed to admit it. What other legitimate excuse would explain the considerable cab fare expenses that he submitted to Accounts Payable at Sidley Austin? Maybe he bought all those sports tickets on his expense account but couldn't make the games. The same with the country club dinners; he might have been on the hook for meals he planned to eat but had to cancel at the last minute.

Or he needed the extra money. Just a little.

$69,000 worth of cab rides over the course of five years isn't much, compared to what he must have been earning for honest (relatively speaking, he is a lawyer, after all) work.

Mr. Smolen was a high-placed lawyer in the politically connected firm, a partner hauling in a chunk of the profits. Could it be that the chunk shrank over the years, what with Mr. Smolen dealing in real estate law and the real estate market has not exactly been thriving of late.You get used to a certain level of income and when it drops, it isn't easy to adjust to hard times.

According to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, Mr. Smolen stole from his employer by submitting fraudulent expense accounts, from cab rides he didn't take to Mother's Day brunch at the country club that had nothing to do with Sidley Austin business. The total came to around $119,000.

So egregious was the fraud that Mr. Smolen was promptly hired by DLA Piper, to work in their real estate law division.

As far as Sidley Austin's rival is concerned, Mr. Smolen is too good an attorney to let some minor expense account padding diminish his star. In law practices as enormous as DLA Piper and Sidley Austin, it isn't unheard of for a top level executive to think he isn't getting as much as he should so he cheats a little here and there. What's the big deal?

Not to say the DLA Piper won't keep a close eye on Mr. Smolen's expenses, but they aren't all that concerned. As long as he brings in more business and proves his worth, what's a little theft among thieves?

Sidley Austin is on the hook to the client from whose funds Mr. Smolen helped himself, and they've gone to the attorney disciplinary commission to wring a little blood out of the legal stone. It doesn't look good for an important law firm to be seen as condoning or permitting theft from clients. The clients tend to look elsewhere. But at least one client won't be turning to DLA Piper to manage their real estate litigation needs.