Venture capitalist Fred Wilson thinks that’s too high a fee in a case where standard forms were employed and the other party wasn’t represented by counsel. Is it? Are there reasons to suppose a competitive market for a widely replicable legal service wouldn’t converge on some sort of market-clearing rate? [Above the Law]
More: Max Kennerly offers one lawyer’s view.
Plaintiff’s lawyers agreed to seek a maximum of $99.9 million in fees in the settlement of the Cobell class action over federal mismanagement of Indian tribal trust funds. Now, however, a different number has suddenly appeared on the agenda: $223 million. [National Law Journal]
A man says that he secured a $900,000 settlement from the Roman Catholic church over his abuse by a priest, but “alleges that attorneys who represented him in the case managed to claim $877,000 of the settlement, leaving him with no more than $23,000.” The man switched attorneys 2 1/2 years into the case and subsequently lost a case filed by the first attorney saying he had been deprived of his rightful fee. His new suit contends that he was wrongly advised to fight the first lawyer’s suit every step of the way. [Oregonian]
A disciplinary committee said it lacked probable cause to charge a court-appointed criminal defense lawyer from Jacksonville, though it described his billing standards as “not consistent with the high standards of our profession.” [ABA Journal, Florida Times-Union]
That’s the way to help ’em out!
While such an approach is sometimes used in commercial litigation, this is a first for consumer cases, said Lester Brickman, a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York.
“For a lawyer to supplement or replace the banks as a long-term mortgage creditor of homeowners leaves me a little queasy,” said Mr. Brickman, an expert on contingency fees. “It’s an invitation for the public to say, ‘There go the lawyers again.’ ”
OK, we’ll say it: There go the lawyers again. [New York Times via Ribstein/TotM and Knake/LEF]
Pennsylvania: “The Lower Merion School District will pay $610,000 to settle lawsuits over its tracking of student laptop computers, ending an eight-month saga that thrust the elite district into a global spotlight and stirred questions about technology and privacy in schools.” Specifically, $175,000 will go to two students who sued, and $425,000 to their lawyer, while lawyers and computer specialists hired by the school in its defense have billed more than $1 million. “And the attorney for at least one other student has notified the district that he was contemplating a lawsuit.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, Balko, Kennerly]
Glenn C. Lewis, a divorce lawyer who “boasts that he is the most expensive lawyer in the [Washington, D.C.] region,” sued a former client “for an additional $500,000 in fees and interest, although he’d already been paid $378,000.” Lewis says the case was a demanding one and that he earned the money fair and square, but things did not go particularly well for his cause before judges in suburban Fairfax County. [Washington Post via Above the Law]
Sorrows of a Texas fen-phen lawyer now accused (in a civil lawsuit) of getting creative with his clients’ expense allocations. [Houston Chronicle via Ted at PoL]