Out of curiosity, I checked to see how many hours I billed on those days in my private practice for clients  and here is what I found

May 1 - 9.45 hours

May 2 - 8.5 hours

May 5 - 6.65 hours

May 6 - 10.0 hours.

I work really hard as a lawyer and those hours billed by me are at the very high end of what I usually bill in total for one day.  There are plenty of days when I bill three hours or less.  The most hours I have billed in one day that I can recall in my 27 year legal career is 14 hours and that involved a jury trial.

A March 8, 2013 Op-ed article in the New York Times entitled "The Tyranny of the Billable Hour" discussed billing expectations for young lawyers at large, slave-driving Manhattan law firms and said, "Most big firms require associates to bill at least 1,900 hours a year, according to a survey last year by NALP, the National Association for Legal Career Professionals.... Billing 2,000 hours a year isn't easy. It typically takes at least 50 hours a week to bill an honest 40 hours to a client."  A lawyer expected to bill 1,900 hours in a year would have to bill clients a total of 36.5 hours every seven days.  In these four days in May, Ms. Franklin billed the county 74.50  hours on CPS cases and that did not include any work she did on her private cases.  There were only a total of 96 hours in those four days.  At the rate Franklin was billing during those four days, her total hours billed in a year would be over double what big New York City law firms expect of their overworked associate attorneys and those attorneys would not also be running for judge.

Given my firm belief that knowingly submitting a false pay voucher to the county is a crime, I desperately tried to think of a way to explain Franklin's billing that does not result in the conclusion she committed a crime. It does not help that Judge Franklin is not providing me any explanation for this billing.  I e-mailed about a dozen really smart, experienced family lawyers with these facts and asked them to imagine what possible explanation for these billing totals could be.  Other than the obvious excuse that Franklin made a mistake on her dates, sadly no one could think of any explanation.  A "typographical" error on billing dates is an unlikely explanation because these vouchers are handwritten in Franklin's own neat, precise printing.     

Rounding up from five minutes on a phone call to a quarter of an hour, as many lawyers in private practice do, is not an excuse for Franklin either because: (1) she has no contract with the county that allows her to round up and bill for work she did not actually do, and (2) I have checked and mathematically, that does not reduce the number of hours she billed on three of these days to a believable number.

The attorneys I e-mailed about this issue collectively represent a few centuries of combined legal experience, and all those who replied agreed with me that Ms. Franklin simply could not have worked the hours she billed the county for on these days.

I hear through others that Franklin is going to claim that her invoices on these days included work done by her associate attorney.  The problem with that defense is that it proves her invoices were false because they clearly purport to show legal work done only by Alicia Franklin.  The Texas Family Code speaks of an attorney ad litem as singular person, not a law firm.  There is no statutory authority that allows a judge to appoint a specific person to represent a child and then allow another lawyer to work and bill in that appointed position.  If Governor Perry were, through some miracle, to appoint me to the Board of Regents for the University of Texas, I could not send my brother to appear for me at board meetings and then bill the State as if I had done that work. 

I truly hope that Franklin has not engaged in what CPS insiders call "repeat billing."  This is one strategy developed by some of the attorneys who live off of CPS appointments to increase what they are paid by the judges.  "Repeat billing" is a euphemism for illegal double billing and it involves submitting time for work on a case in one month and then perhaps two months, later submitting the same time on the same case.  The judge on the second appearance cannot possibly recall what he approved on a voucher weeks before and he does not have all vouchers submitted in the case before him.  If caught, the attorney can always claim it was an innocent clerical error.   This allows the attorney to get paid twice for the same work. 

My full paper on this topic includes examples of anomalies found in Franklin's billing, which at least make it appear that Franklin could be sometimes billing the county twice for the same work.   

Franklin's CPS pay vouchers are all handwritten (presumably in her own hand) and she bills in quarter hour increments.  In contrast, other CPS ad litem attorneys submit typed pay vouchers that appear to be created by billing software programs.  Other CPS attorneys, such as Ronnie Harrison, bill in time increments as short as 0.05 hours or 3 minutes, which is a much better bargain for the county.  My full article includes  samples of the time sheets submitted by Franklin and three other ad litem attorneys for "out of court" work.   The contrast between these samples of billing by ad litems is striking and makes Franklin's bills look very haphazardly slapped together and unprofessional.  George Clevenger's bills for his CPS work are particularly professional looking and I suspect I may have to prospectively take back everything I have not yet written about him.  I concede it is possible to be politically well connected and do a good job on cases and accurately bill the county.  It is not fair for me to pre-judge anyone. 

I am paying someone now to analyze every invoice for CPS work Ms. Franklin submitted to the county for the entire year of 2013.  I had him start with March 2013 and we have already found a day, March 20, 2013, with 20.25 total hours billed by Franklin.

I do not think Franklin is the only attorney submitting false bills to the county for court appointments in CPS work.  Unfortunately for her, Franklin's vouchers (ordered from the County Auditor) arrived before other vouchers I have ordered.  Unlike the other attorneys who I believe are involved in this practice, however, Franklin is now a judge.  That makes this a really big deal.  

A prominent female criminal defense attorney in San Antonio was just sentenced to ten years in prison for double billing the county on criminal appointments (and forging judges' signatures).   

This matter should be investigated by someone other than District Attorney Devon Anderson, who first bungled the Judge Pratt investigation then let Pratt off the hook criminally once I found proof even the judge could not deny.  Anderson is running on the same Republican ticket this year as Franklin and she is tied into the same political power brokers who are themselves involved with this CPS billing scandal.  We need a "prosecutor pro tem" appointed who will actually look into this mess vigorously and objectively.  This prosecutor should be from a city far from Houston and not have any ties to the political establishment that currently runs this county.  If Franklin did nothing wrong, then a truly independent prosecutor should determine that (which is what I sincerely hope happens).

I would really like to think that Franklin did not knowingly submit these false bills to the county.  However, any defendant accused of such a crime would claim "it was a clerical error!"  How will such a smart lady ever convince us she could make such mistakes? 

The first thing law enforcement should look for are the actual time records kept by Alicia Franklin on her CPS cases.  It is clear that these CPS pay vouchers I have seen were filled out by hand by Franklin all on the same day, so they are not contemporaneous records a lawyer would make at the time to record his or her billable time.  I sincerely hope that there are such time records to be found!   

 Count Two: Billing for CPS Work After She Became Judge    

Here is a shocker: judges cannot practice law!  There is  a specific provision in the Texas Canons of Judicial Ethics, Canon 4(G) that says a judge cannot practice law.  It would also apparently shock and surprise some that it is illegal to bill the county for work you did not do.

So, taking those two basic principles in mind, consider this: Judge Franklin, after she was sworn into office as a judge, submitted a pay voucher to the county for lawyer work on a CPS case done after she became a judge.  Moreover, Franklin tried to mislead the Houston Chronicle editorial board last week in replying to this allegation by telling them that she started work on the bench on June 18, 2014.  Franklin knew she had to tell the editors that she started work on June 18 because she had submitted a handwritten invoice for CPS work signed by her on June 17 for legal work she had done on June 13, 16 and 17, including one hour of "in court appearance." 

I am guessing that Franklin forgot the e-mail she sent me that confirmed she was sworn in as judge by Lisa Millard on June 13, 2014.  I obtained from the Texas Secretary of State a copy of the oath of office signed by Alicia Franklin and dated June 13.

Click here to see the oath of office, invoices and e-mails involved and my article that seems to show beyond doubt that Franklin billed the county for lawyer work she claimed to have performed after she was sworn in as judge. 

I checked with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct and they confirmed that a district judge simply cannot practice law.  They said that "winding down" a law practice cannot include a court appearance or billing the county for work done by the judge as a lawyer.

So, choose Ms. Franklin: either you falsely billed the county for legal work or you accurately billed for legal work performed after you had been sworn in as a judge.  Either way, you have a big problem.

I hear that the County Auditor, after my last newsletter mentioned this issue, is refusing to pay the invoices submitted under Franklin's name for CPS legal work after she became a judge.  Most of those invoices were signed by Franklin's associate attorney but submitted under Franklin's name (which itself does not seem proper).  However, the June 17 CPS invoice is signed by Franklin herself and clearly purports to bill for legal work Franklin herself did.  The court's docket sheet and the other attorneys in that case should be able to confirm if it was Franklin herself who appeared in juvenile court as lawyer on June 17.

 Count Three: Accepting A Campaign Contribution from a Party to a Case She Was The Amicus Attorney On  

My first published book might not be set in London in the Spring of 1881 after all.  It could well be about Judge Franklin and her predecessor, Judge Pratt.  I have more than enough information to fill a book. 

Click here to read about this truly too-sleazy-to-believe scenario: an amicus attorney appointed to represent a child in a nasty custody case decides to run for judge and accepts a large campaign contribution from a party to the case.  Sadly, Alicia Franklin, is the protagonist in this wretched story as well.

Ms. Franklin was appointed  an amicus attorney for a young boy in a hotly contested custody case by Judge Lisa Millard in case no. 2012-04106 on  April 20, 2012.  This case involved parents and grandparents.

On October 15, 2013, Ms. Franklin and the grandparents' attorney filed a joint motion for enforcement against the mother for not obeying a court order on visitation.  It is extremely unusual for an amicus attorney to file a joint motion with another party.  I have never actually seen it happen in my 27 years of practice.   It certainly shows that on October 15, Franklin was very actively involved in the Maxim case and would have known who the grandfather, Joe Maxim, was.

On the very next day, on October 16, 2013, Ms. Franklin, who then was running for judge, accepted a $1,000 contribution from the grandfather in that case.  That contribution was not disclosed by Ms. Franklin to the other parties or their attorneys or to the judge.

Franklin admitted that she accepted the grandfather's contribution when she met with the Houston Chronicle editorial board.  Franklin insisted she had done nothing improper, in part because she had accepted a $4,000 contribution from a lawyer who briefly represented one of the other parties to that case.

A grandfather who so badly wants custody of a grandchild because of the parents' bad behavior really needs the "neutral" amicus attorney on his side to have chance for custody.  How could any lawyer in their right mind ever think it was ethical to solicit or to accept a campaign contribution from such a grandfather while the candidate was the amicus in the grandpa's hotly contested custody case?

This is just another example of very bad ethical decisions Ms. Franklin has made recently.  Ironically, the grandfather was represented by Rita Lucido, the law partner of Sherri Cothrun, who is the Democrat running against Franklin.  Cothrun made Lucido aware of the grandfather's contribution in May 2014 after Cothrun looked at Franklin's campaign finance reports.    I wonder what other ethical lapses of Judge Franklin are out there waiting to be discovered?  My next newsletter will provide a few more examples unfortunately.

Our system of justice works only if we have fair, ethical judges who command the respect of attorneys and the public.  Franklin's defective moral compass is something to really worry about as long as she is a judge.