Attorney invoices to municipalities and other government agencies are subject to disclosure under the New Jersey Open Public Records Act, N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq. (OPRA). The standard OPRA exceptions apply to these “government records,” so custodians must redact all confidential information from them before providing them to OPRA requestors. Unfortunately, redacting invoices requires attorney review, so taxpayers often incur additional legal fees when attorney invoices are requested under OPRA. In the private sector, attorneys are encouraged to write billing narratives that capture their work as completely as they practically can, and the use of personal identifiers and descriptions of litigation strategies is standard practice. However, when it comes to municipal work, more detail is not always the best course, and municipal attorneys should strive to draft their bills as generically as possible while still justifying their time to their governing bodies.

A good exercise to help achieve this goal is to draft every bill as though it absolutely will be subject to an OPRA request (and this presumption is not so far-fetched). For example, when referring to employee investigations or labor disputes, matters should be described generally and the identities of specific employees and witnesses should not be revealed. Although it is common for labor and employment attorneys to use initials to describe individuals, this practice should also be avoided since initials often must be redacted, and even the length of redactions or simple redaction errors can jeopardize the privacy interests that custodians are charged with protecting. Similarly, when describing legal research or other legal work, descriptions should be general and should never reveal litigation strategy. In addition to reducing legal fees, generic billing helps reduce municipal clients’ overall liability exposure by eliminating the need to make sensitive and timely redactions.

Attorneys must discuss any proposed generic billing styles with their clients to determine acceptable practices and agree to any useful billing conventions. Even better, municipalities can create their own standards and incorporate them into attorney engagements. For example, the State Division of Law publishes specific guidelines for outside counsel, including a detailed section on invoice format in which the Division explicitly prohibits “[i]ncomplete or vague charge descriptions” and provides some examples of the kinds of charge descriptions it will not accept. The Division’s standards might seem at odds with the “generic billing” we are describing, so it is important to emphasize that generic billing is not vague or incomplete billing. Attorneys can adequately account for their time using robust, detailed billing narratives without revealing confidential information, so long as they maintain awareness of OPRA confidentiality concerns and exercise their creativity.