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Study: Inconsistency in Fee Calculations in Securities Class Actions

April 10, 2015 | Posted in : Article / Book, Contingency Fees / POF, Expenses / Costs, Fee Award, Fee Calculation Method, Fee Data / Fee Analytics, Fee Reduction, Fee Request, Fee Scholarship, Lodestar, Study / Report

An upcoming Columbia Law Review article by law professors Lynn Baker and Charles Silver of the University of Texas and Michael Perino of St. John’s University entitled “Is the Price Right: An Empirical Study of Fee-Setting in Securities Class Actions” (pdf) studies attorney fee awards in securities class actions.  The article states:

Every year, fee awards enable millions of people to obtain access to justice and strengthen the deterrent effect of the law by motivating lawyers to handle class actions.  But the process by which judges decide how much to pay lawyers remains a black box.  Settlements go in one side; fee awards come out the other.  The inputs and outputs have been studied, but the actual operation of the fee-setting mechanism has not.  Consequently, it is difficult to know why judges award the amounts they do or whether they size fee awards correctly.

Both numerically and in terms of dollars recovered, securities cases dominate the federal courts’ class action docket.  We therefore undertook to peer into the fee-setting black box by studying in detail all the 434 securities class actions that settled in federal district courts from 2007 through 2012.  We examined the actual court filings in each case to create an original, comprehensive dataset of information on all points at which federal judges are likely to consider issues relating to fees.  These data enable us to paint a picture of the fee-setting process that is unusually detailed and nuanced and that falsifies many common beliefs.

Among our major findings are that (1) federal judges often deviate from the path Congress laid out in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Action (PSLRA), which requires lead plaintiffs to set the terms of class counsel’s retention and federal judges to serve as backstops against abuses: (2) fees tend to be lower in federal district that see a high volume of securities class actions than among low volume judges; (4) the well-known “decrease-increase” rule, according to which fee percentages decline as settlements become larger, operates mainly in high-volume district; and (5) judges appear to cut fees randomly, that is, on the basis of their own predilections rather than the merits of fee requests.  Finally, we learn that so-called “lodestar cross-checks,” which require judges to consider the “time and labor expended by counsel” and other factors to ensure against excessive fees, accomplish nothing.  Actual fee awards reflect something closer to a pure “percentage of the fund” approach.

In sum, we found little evidence that the actions currently taken by the courts in securities class actions move class counsel’s fees closer to the “right price.”  We therefore propose a set of procedural reforms which courts easily adopt that would make fee-setting in securities class actions more transparent more compatible with the normative goals of the PSLRA, and more predictable.  The reforms would encourage lawyers to invest optimally in class actions, with salutary effects for investors seeking compensation and the integrity of the financial markets.