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Attorney Accused of Excessive Fees Wins Back Law License

October 10, 2011 | Posted in : Billing Practices, Ethics & Professional Responsibility, Fee Request

A recent Reuters story, “Attorney Who Charged Excessive Fees Wins Back Law License” reports that an attorney whose license was suspended for routinely excessive fees in surrogate cases has won the right to practice law again.  A New York appellate court ruled that Louis Rosenthal, who served as counsel to the Brooklyn public administrator from 1997 to 2002, where he handled the estates of people who died without written wills or close relatives, “possesses the character and general fitness to resume the practice of law.”

In 2008, the same court slapped Rosenthal with a two year suspension after investigators found he had billed more than $2 million in excessive fees over a five year period.  State law caps attorneys’ fees in surrogate cases at 6 percent, but Rosenthal regularly charged 8 percent.  In addition to billing for excessive fees, Rosenthal admitted to failing to file mandatory affidavits that outlined the work he had done.  Instead, he wrote fee requests on Post-It notes and affixed them to court documents.

The case spurred the state’s top court to kick former Surrogate Court Judge Michael Feinberg off the bench in 2002.  Feinberg, who granted Rosenthal a total of $8.6 million in fees over five years without questioning his methods, was disbarred in 2005.  Investigators and the media claimed Feinberg and Rosenthal, who both attended Brooklyn Law School in the 1960s, were good friends, and said the attorney curried favor with the judge to win the counsel job.  “We were friends, (Feinberg) came to my son’s bar mitzvah, but so did 300 other people,” Rosenthal said.