Attorney fees. There are few things in the practice of law that are as sacrosanct as payment for the professional guidance we provide to our clients, whether the matter is a billion-dollar complex acquisition by a multinational conglomerate or drafting a simple will. As lawyers we tend to be very self-aware, perhaps even sensitive, when it comes to being paid what we deem a reasonable amount for our time and attention to our craft. For those of us who practice in the employment law world where there is a statutory fee-shifting provision, we tend to be even more in tune to legal issues affecting how we are paid. That is why two recent decisions from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued merely a day apart have prompted some curious head-scratching by practitioners.
Both decisions involve fee-shifting statutes, both decisions relate to settlement of employment law disputes, both decisions required the court to assess the reasonableness of requested fees, both decisions cited the range of hourly rates used by Community Legal Services (the CLS fee schedule), and in fact, both decisions involve the same plaintiffs attorney. The results, therefore, could be expected to be the same or similar. But nothing is ever quite as it seems.
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