Reduction of Fees Paid to Lawyers

* Hooray for Judge Gary L. Taylor! Greg Miller’s article in your March 6 business section, “Judge Slashes Lawyer Fees in Shareholder Lawsuit,” was a pleasure to read and I hope every judge and lawyer will read it. There is a real message in Judge Taylor’s decision to reduce the almost automatic 33% to 50% fees lawyers charge regardless of how few hours are spent on a case.

Of course, in really difficult cases that also go to trial, lawyers may be worth a third of the award, if they win. But from what little I have seen, most cases are settled out of court with only a few legal secretary hours and even fewer actual lawyer working hours. And most of us recognize that if a lawyer loses in a contingency type case that they can’t even settle, they will have been working for very little, if anything.

But the main point is that the fees charged should be somewhat reflective of the amount of the necessary “skilled” hours that are applied to the case. Judge Taylor’s slashing of the normal 30% fees in a $10-million settlement to a more reasonable 10% is a clear demonstration that a judge is using judgment. I feel confident that Judge Taylor determined the amount of hours billed to the case and that he was sure 10% of $10 million--a whole million dollars--would be generous compensation for the involved legal firm.

I must applaud the application of common sense, because it is probably the most uncommon thing there is in the legal world.

DAVE CONNELL

Laguna Beach