Courts can reduce or deny attorney fee awards for a variety of reasons.
They will scrutinize the itemization of time spent, eliminating compensation for legal services that the court considers to have been unnecessary, ineffective, or duplicative. They will examine the expertise and experience of the attorney involved and, if they find that the attorney is not sufficiently qualified in the field of special education law or that the prevailing rate for comparable services in the area is less than what the attorney charged, will reduce the hourly rate applied to the fee award. This especially applies to expert witness fees. See, e.g., P.S. v Contoocook Valley School Dist. The 1997 amendments also require that a request for due process hearing contain certain information and that attorney's fees be reduced if the information is not included.