The ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility Informal Opinion 86-1520 defers to the law of the individual state in determining the validity of liens and concluded that the right to assert an attorney s lien is subject to the lawyer s obligation to diligently represent the client. This concept acknowledges that the function of a retaining lien is to prejudice the client in the first instance but not irrevocably. PBA Formal Opinion 94-35. What constitutes a reasonable fee is generally within the discretion of the trial court. Trial judges have been known to base fee awards on what they charged when they were in private practice, what the average lawyer in the jurisdiction charges, the judge s own per diem and a seemingly endless variety of other irrelevant factors.
Some judges require education.
One way that you can do this is to provide expert testimony from an Academy fellow in the jurisdiction. The fee agreement with the client must spell out the charges and could include an acknowledgement that these fees are not in the bargain basement category. You should understand that these rates may be substantially higher than those charged by attorneys who do not limit their practices to family law. Occasionally one finds judges who object to awarding counsel fees for work performed by nonlawyers. Matrimonial lawyers are notorious optimists and should never permit themselves to estimate the costs of a particular proceeding because they will invariably hope for the best and underestimate.