Attorney to Pay County $25,511 for Overbilling

A Los Angeles attorney who was accused of overbilling for legal services he performed on behalf of indigent defendants has agreed to pay the county $25,511, prosecutors said.

W. Raymond Newman, who, in 1988, was the highest paid court-appointed attorney in a county bar program, reached the out-of-court settlement last week with the district attorney’s office. He had been paid $508,000 in 1988 by the Los Angeles Superior Court for representing indigents, and had allegedly billed for work performed on 366 days of the year, officials said. Records indicated that he had billed for 5,000 hours of work, far in excess of the annual average of 2,000 billable hours normally claimed by civil law firms.

Newman was suspended last month from the county bar’s Indigent Criminal Defense Appointment program, a panel of court-sanctioned attorneys who provide services to clients when the public defender’s office is unavailable.