NALFA recently conducted a survey of federal and state judges in some of the nation’s busiest courts.  NALFA asked over a 1,000 trial-level judges a range of questions related to awarding attorney fees and expenses in litigation. 

NALFA began this survey after hosting the nation's only all-judicial CLE panel on attorney fee awards in April.  “At NALFA, we track data on attorney fee awards but we wanted to learn more from the judges on their thoughts and attitudes towards attorney fee awards,” said Terry Jesse, Executive Director of NALFA.

While the most of the survey results are not conclusive, one finding stands out from the rest: of those judges who participated in the survey, 67% preferred the work of an outside qualified fee expert in the determination of reasonable attorney fees and expenses in large scale fee matters.

“The survey results show that fee-seeking and fee-challenging attorneys who retain a qualified fee expert have the edge in fee matters,” Jesse said.  "You need a fee expert because litigators can't be objective about their own fees.  “Qualified outside fee experts can provide the court with unbiased, independent analysis on the reasonableness of attorney fees and expenses in underlying litigation,” Jesse concluded.