In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 01-1427

Virginia Fogle and Fatina Fogle,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

William Chevrolet/Geo, Inc.,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 99 C 5960--James F. Holderman, Judge.

Argued October 2, 2001--Decided December 26, 2001

 Before Posner, Easterbrook, and Evans,

Circuit Judges.

 Posner, Circuit Judge. After obtaining

a favorable settlement of their consumer

fraud lawsuit against the defendant, an

automobile dealer, in which they had

charged violations of the federal truthin-lending and odometer-tampering

statutes as well as various Illinois

state laws in the sale of two cars to

them, the plaintiffs asked the district

court to award them $44,000 (we are

rounding off to the nearest $1,000) in

attorney’s fees for the work of

theirlawyer, Andy Norman. Norman had

arrived at this amount by multiplying his

claimed hourly fee of $310 by the number

of hours (143) that he claimed to have

put in on the case. The district judge

found that Norman’s performance, although

it had achieved significant relief for

the plaintiffs-- the rescission of the

contract for one of the cars and a refund

of a substantial part of the purchase

price of the other--had been mediocre.

Norman was "in the bottom-tier skill-wise

of this specialty [consumer fraud

litigation] based on his performance in

this case" and $310 was not his real

hourly fee. The judge cut Norman’s hours

to 60 and his fee to $185, and so awarded

the plaintiffs only $11,000 in attorney’s

fees.
 When computing a lawyer’s fee under a

fee-shifting statute, the judge’s

objective is to approximate the fee the

lawyer would have obtained in the market

for legal services. People Who Care v.

Rockford Board of Education, No. 01-1784,

2001 WL 1512907 (7th Cir. Nov. 29, 2001);

Pressely v. Haeger, 977 F.2d 295, 299

(7th Cir. 1992). The judge is trying to

"mimic the market in legal services."

Gaskill v. Gordon, 160 F.3d 361, 363 (7th

Cir. 1998). One way he can do this, the

most common way in fact, is to estimate

the number of hours that the lawyer would

have devoted to the case in question, and

the hourly rate he would have charged,

had these determinants of the fee been

determined by the market. In re Synthroid

Marketing Litigation, 264 F.3d 712, 718

(7th Cir. 2001); Bankston v. Illinois, 60

F.3d 1249, 1256 (7th Cir. 1995); Gusman

v. Unisys Corp., 986 F.2d 1146, 1150 (7th

Cir. 1993); In re Continental Illinois

Securities Litigation, 962 F.2d 566, 568,

572 (7th Cir. 1992). The two determinants

are sometimes reciprocals. A lawyer’s

hourly rate may be above average because

he can get the work done in fewer hours,

Gusman v. Unisys Corp., supra, 986 F.2d

at 1150, or because though he devotes the

same number of hours to the case as an

average lawyer would and so his aggregate

fee is higher, his endeavors provide more

value to the client by increasing the

likelihood and (or) amount of a favorable

judgment. Id. So there is no single,

market-wide fee for a given case, and

this requires the judge to consider the

quality of the particular lawyer as well

as the amount of time that he devoted to

the case. Id.; Eddleman v. Switchcraft,

Inc., 965 F.2d 422, 425 (7th Cir. 1992);

Star Financial Services, Inc. v. AASTAR

Mortgage Corp., 89 F.3d 5, 17 (1st Cir.

1996).

 The best evidence of the lawyer’s

quality is the fee he commands in the

market, Batt v. Micro Warehouse, Inc.,

241 F.3d 891, 895 (7th Cir. 2001); Uphoff

v. Elegant Bath, Ltd., 176 F.3d 399, 407-

08 (7th Cir. 1999); Gusman v. Unisys

Corp., supra, 986 F.2d at 1150, but such

evidence may not be available if the

lawyer is usually compensated by a-courtawarded fee, which is Norman’s situation.

He has had few paying clients as it were

and only two who have ever paid him $310

an hour and those for only a few hours.

Given the well-known informational
problems in the legal-services market, a

lawyer’s ability to persuade the very

occasional client to pay a very high

hourly rate is poor evidence of the

lawyer’s market value. In fact, it is

evident that Norman could not sell all or

even a decent fraction of his time at

$310, for if he could, he would not have

taken this case, where the payoff (even

if valued at $310 per hour) was

contingent because he could not be

certain of prevailing.

 In the absence of a reliable market test

of his own services, Norman had to show

that lawyers of comparable ability

commanded the rate he was asking the

judge to assess. Blum v. Stenson, 465

U.S. 886, 895 and n. 11 (1984); Small v.

Richard Wolf Medical Instruments Corp.,

264 F.3d 702, 707 (7th Cir. 2001); Batt

v. Micro Warehouse, Inc., supra, 241 F.3d

at 894; Uphoff v. Elegant Bath, Ltd.,

supra, 176 F.3d at 408; Spegon v.

Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 175 F.3d 544,

555 (7th Cir. 1999); Pressely v. Haegert,

supra, 977 F.2d at 299. To this end,

Norman submitted the affidavit of a

lawyer named James Wilber who does not

practice law in Illinois or in any

federal court, does not even live in

Illinois, has not practiced law since

1990, and made no study of the Chicago

(or any other) consumer fraud litigation

lawyer market but instead relied on

Norman’s own self-serving selfevaluation. His conclusion that Norman’s

market value is indeed $310 (or higher,

Wilber attested with a flourish) is

groundless, the affidavit worthless and

inadmissible under Daubert v. Merrell Dow

Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579

(1993). See General Electric Co. v.

Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 146 (1997); Dhillon

v. Crown Controls Corp., 269 F.3d 865,

869-70 (7th Cir. 2001) (expert’s failure

to show that opinion is product of

reliable principles and methods renders

testimony inadmissible); People Who Care

v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d

528, 537-38 (7th Cir. 1997) ("a

statistical study that fails to correct

for salient explanatory variables, or

even to make the most elementary

comparisons, has no value as causal

explanation and is therefore inadmissible

in a federal court"). There are almost a

million lawyers in the United States, and

if Wilber’s affidavit counts as evidence

there will never be a case in which a
lawyer can’t produce the paid affidavit

of another lawyer that his market value

is whatever he says it is. Norman was

rightly denied a judicial award of $310

an hour.

 He argues that it was double counting

for the judge to reduce his hours as well

as his hourly fee. Not so. A lawyer worth

only $185 an hour may still put in more

hours in expectation of a court-awarded

fee than he would if his client were

breathing down his neck. See Eddleman v.

Switchcraft, Inc., supra, 965 F.2d at

425. The judge reasonably concluded that

that is what Norman had done.

Affirmed.