Attorney Fee Expert Work - FAQs

In matters in which the prevailing party is entitled to receive payment of all or some of its attorney’s fees from the losing party, an attorney’s fees expert is often needed to provide testimony to aid the court in determining what a “reasonable” award of attorney’s fees would be under the circumstances. Each side, both the prevailing party and losing party, will often retain their own expert to conduct an analysis and provide testimony to the court about what they believe a reasonable fee award for the prevailing party would be.

Generally speaking, a fee expert assesses the reasonable number of hours they believe the prevailing party’s counsel expended on the litigation, assesses a reasonable hourly rate for each timekeeper involved, and takes the product of those reasonable hours expended and the reasonable hourly rates to arrive at a “lodestar” calculation as to the reasonable attorney’s fee due to the prevailing party. This often involves review of the case docket, pertinent pleadings and motions, discovery, emails exchanged between the parties, and deposition and trial transcripts to assess whether the time expended on each task was reasonable. The expert will also assess the timekeepers involved, their level of experience and role in the case, prevailing market rates for attorneys of similar skill and experience, etc. to determine a reasonable hourly rate for each timekeeper. Each side’s expert will then testify in court (assuming the issue does not settle first) as to what they believe a reasonable fee award to be based upon their review.

Just because an attorney billed a certain amount of time for a given task does not mean the full amount of time billed must be paid by the losing party. Billed time is often reduced by a fee expert for a number of reasons recognized by Florida law, including “block billing” (wherein a timekeeper lumps together a number of discrete tasks for a total sum of time billed, without identifying how much time was spent on each individual referenced task); vague billing (where the time entry is not sufficiently detailed to be able to objectively assess whether the time expended was reasonable); duplicative billing (where multiple timekeepers bill for the same task); and excessive billing (where time billed for a given task is excessive in light of the time it should have taken to complete the task).

Yes, a fee expert may and often is required to testify at hearing or trial to aid the court in determining a reasonable fee award. These “fee hearings” can last anywhere from a few minutes to many days, depending on the nature and complexity of the case and the particular issues involved.

Each party is responsible for retaining their own expert. If one side has an expert testify at a fee hearing while the other side does not, the court may give substantially more deference to the party who offered an expert opinion when making findings as to a reasonable fee award.