My "thinking" behind Palm Beach County School Board's legal bill

There has been a lot of criticism about the way a law firm has billed the Palm Beach County School Board to produce a 29-page report that was deemed “a gross waste of public funds” by the board’s inspector general.

The board had hired the Holland & Knight law firm to provide guidance in the fallout of the school district's firing of former Spanish River High School Principal William Latson.

In 2018, Latson told a parent at the Boca Raton school, “I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee.”

Last year, four years after those remarks, the law firm was hired by the district on a no-bid contract to sort out lingering conflict-of-interest and abuse-of-power claims that arose in the handling of the Latson investigation.

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The initial contract was for $150,000 of legal services but the bill ballooned to $226,000, and the report it generated was characterized as a useless book report that failed to answer the pertinent questions.

The high cost of thinking about doing something

To get to this number, the two lawyers and one paralegal doing the bulk of the report didn’t only bill for what they did. They also billed for thinking and talking to each other about what they were going to do.

This reminds me of my daughter, who while a student at the University of Florida, signed up for a class called “Introduction to Recreation.”

I explained to her that having a course called “Recreation” on a college transcript was already a red flag for laziness, but having an “Introduction to Recreation” class, was basically saying, “I’m so lazy that mere recreation sounds like too much work, and something I need to gently work up to.”

So, I like to think that the legal tab to the School District included some billable time that might best be described as “introduction to lawyering.”

For example, one of the lawyers, who billed his time at $660 per hour, charged the school district for 25 minutes of his time for thinking about an upcoming meeting. That’s right. Not participating in a meeting. Just thinking about it.

Or as he put it, to “consider issues” that might come up.

It's not a shower, it's a thinking chamber

I’m wondering if thinking, in all its variations, is billed at the same price. Sure, maybe “considering” may be priced at $660 per hour.

But what about “mulling,” or perhaps its slightly more expensive upgrade, “mulling over"?

I’ve been known to “mull over” a choice between a Reuben sandwich and a tuna melt at a deli for a billable number of minutes.

And is it acceptable to bill while taking a shower? I do a lot of thinking while taking a shower. Although, I would probably call it “accidental pondering” for invoice purposes.

I reach for the shampoo, and then, boom, for reasons I can’t explain, I’m singing a Turtles song from 1967.

“Imagine me and you, I do. I think about you day and night, it’s only ri–ee-ight …"

Or sometimes, it’s not a song, but a laugh line I could use for a column that’s still in its formative stage of development.

I think there are non-thinkers too, especially in Florida

Thinking is not for everybody. Some people seem to operate almost completely in a thoughtless way.

Top athletes have a way of disengaging their brains to achieve peak physical performance. And I’m pretty sure that Donald Trump supporters are proficient at flatlining.

In case you haven’t noticed, Florida is a haven for non-thinking. The whole “Florida Man” meme is an homage to people who do incredibly stupid, thoughtless things.

Here’s a real headline: “Florida man sits on gun, accidentally shoots himself in groin.”

He wasn’t thinking.

Newspaper columnists are often accused of being non-thinkers

Over the years, many readers have suggested that my column must surely be the product of very little thinking.

Sometimes, they're right. Like right now. I’m just typing. Still typing. Not thinking of a thing. Just padding the word count.

But I will say that there’s actually quite a bit of thinking that goes into my columns. Maybe not full-blown $660-an-hour worthy, laser-focused, Einstein-like, epiphany-producing cloudbursts of thought.

No, it’s more like “aggressive daydreaming” that transitions to “persistent ruminating.”

Or, on some days when I’m lazier than others, it’s mostly just “introduction to persistent ruminating.”

Unfortunately, I can’t bill for it.

My father was right: I should have been a lawyer.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PBC Schools' Latson investigation yields expensive, worthless report