Cristina Gutierrez’s Issues Billing Clients for Work Done in Other Cases

Yesterday, I posted an entry about a number of unrelated documents from other cases being in the case file for Adnan Syed. As I noted in the comments section to my prior post, it also appears as if Cristina Gutierrez was having problems with possibly billing clients for work done for other clients. Again, it’s tough to share the documentation because of issues involving attorney-client privilege, but I again have one (redacted) document that I feel comfortable sharing.

Here’s the document:

Now, of course, this document is not definitive. Indeed, the memo seems to indicate that one of Gutierrez’s clerks caught the billing issue — the other client was being billed for communications with witnesses in Adnan’s cases — and told another clerk to correct it. I’m also not sure whether the error was corrected or whether this other client was one of the dozens of clients who brought successful claims against Gutierrez under Maryland’s Client Protection Fund.

In the end, I don’t know which is worse: (1) this error was not corrected, and this other client was one of the successful claimants against Gutierrez; or (2) this error was corrected, but similar (and, in many cases, worse) “errors” were not corrected in dozens of other cases.

-CM