“Leave It to Lawyers to Think of Beating the Clock Like This …”

I’m both surprised & not, really, after reading this post pointed to by Legal Blog Watch:

"Every once in a while, we lawyers hear about conduct by our colleagues that’s so deceptive that it makes us embarrassed to be part of the profession. David Lat offers an example of the type of activity that I’m describing in this post about a law firm that discovered a way to give itself a couple of extra days to make its filings.

"According to the judge’s order posted at Lat’s site…, the law firm of Snell and Wilmer figured out that it could take advantage of a Utah federal court’s after-hours filing system by stamping the first page of a filing on the due date and returning it to the office. The firm then attached the stamped cover sheet to a pleading completed a day or two later and slipped it back into the after-hours box. Apparently, the firm assumed that court staff would assume that the pleading had been overlooked when the box was previously emptied."

Lawyers cheating! I’m shocked….