Reimbursable hours: Reasonable Legal Expenses
<p>In Florida Nonbinding arbitration, the prevailing party is entitled to <code>reasonable</code> legal expenses (lawyers fees).</p>
<p>IANAL so I do not have a sense or experience as to what is / is not reasonable.</p>
<ol>
<li>Is $400 an hour reasonable?</li>
<li>Reimbursable hours: What is the <strong>thought process</strong> of determining a reasonable range of hours for a case or the upper limit of a reasonable number of hours?</li>
</ol>
<p>Any &quot;rules of thumb&quot; are also appreciated</p>

<p>The starting point of an analysis of reasonable fees is to calculated the &quot;lodestar&quot; which is a reasonable hourly rate times a reasonable number of billable hours devoted to the task.</p>
<p>A reasonable rate is a function of the state and/or metro area, the type of practice involved, the sophistication of the work involved, and the experience and partner v. non-partner status of the lawyer. Where I live, a bar association committee conducts and publishes an economic survey of lawyer compensation in the state every few years broken out with many details which is a benchmark for this analysis. If the lawyer's usually billing rate is in the reasonable range it will usually be honored. In practice, the most common adjustment is to downgrade the hours of a lawyer with little staff that bills a typically fully staffed lawyer rate for paralegal type tasks to a typical paralegal rate. Rate needs to be evaluated on a lawyer by lawyer basis. Often a senior partner will do more skilled tasks like negotiation and trial appearances at a higher rate, while a junior associate or paralegal will do less skilled tasks like organizing client documents and marking them up for disclosure to an adverse party.</p>
<p>It is customary for U.S. lawyers to bill by the tenth of an hour in itemized time statements for each professional billing on a case with a date and description of each task done.</p>
<p>A reasonable number of hours is very difficult for a non-lawyer to establish. Lengthy documents with legal research and analysis, whether or not presented to a court, typically take multiple hours per page. Preparation for depositions, trials and important meetings will often be 1-2 hours per anticipated hour of the event. Meetings, mediations, telephone calls, hearings, depositions, etc. take what they take, plus a little additional time for follow up notes, calendaring deadlines that arise during them or giving someone instructions to do so, updating people not present about what happened, etc. Typically, certain brief tasks like short phone calls, with have a minimum base amount of 0.1-0.25 hours. Charges for working lunches and travel are sometimes controversial.</p>
<p>Once the lodestar analysis is done, reasonable fees may be adjusted up or down for various considerations (more often down than up), on a global analysis basis. A lodestar may be adjusted down for being unreasonable by comparison to the amount in controversy (but not below an amount necessary to avoid malpractice), for securing a particularly poor result, or for being exceptionally inefficient to the point where it appears that lots of time is really just learning how to do an area of practice for the first time. Lodestar is typically adjusted up only for an exceptionally efficient very positive result (e.g. walking into a meeting early on in the case and securing a full settlement in an hour or two avoiding dozens of hours of litigation time later). Time spent correcting mistakes or addressing billing issues typically isn't billed, nor is social conversation with clients.</p>
<p>There is a long literature on the full range of adjustments commonly seen. There is also a global understanding developed by senior lawyers and judges over decades of practice of what an overall case will typically cost or how much work goes into a task. Drafting a deed shouldn't cost $15,000 absent very exceptional circumstances. Preparing and efiling a routine motion for extension of time shouldn't involve $3,000 in fees absent very exceptional circumstances. A routine debt collection case should usually not involve much more than about 50% of the amount owed unless the amount owed is very small indeed.</p>

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