Opinion ID: 73450
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Lack of Billing Judgment

Text: Fee applicants must exercise what the Supreme Court has termed “billing judgment.” Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 434, 103 S. Ct. 1933, 1939-40 (1983). That means they must exclude from their fee applications “excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary [hours],” id., which are hours “that would be unreasonable to bill to a client and therefore to one’s adversary irrespective of the skill, reputation or experience of counsel.” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1301 (emphasis in original). As we will explain, these fee applicants did fail to exercise billing judgment. If fee applicants do not exercise billing judgment, courts are obligated to do it for them, to cut the amount of hours for which payment is sought, pruning out those that are “excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary.” Courts are not authorized to be generous with the money of others, and it is as much the duty of courts to see that excessive fees and expenses are not awarded as it is to see that an adequate amount is awarded. Those opposing fee applications have obligations, too. In order for courts 9 to carry out their duties in this area, “objections and proof from fee opponents” concerning hours that should be excluded must be specific and “reasonably precise.” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1301. The defendants in this case have discharged that obligation well. In the district court and in this Court, they have carefully analyzed the billing records and done what the fee application itself should have done, which is to calculate the number of hours billed for completing each of various litigation tasks: drafting the complaint, drafting the briefs, preparing for and attending the status conference, and preparing for and attending the Internet demonstration. Defendants have put forward specific arguments designed to show that many of the hours submitted by the plaintiffs in connection with a given task indicate a lack of proper billing judgment. Before going to the facts relating to this issue, we address three preliminary matters. First, we note that the district court’s entire discussion of the reasonableness of the hours submitted consists of general statements that those hours accurately reflect the time and labor required, that the attorneys’ affidavits indicate they exercised billing judgment, and that affidavits “from independent civil rights lawyers, as well as the court’s own knowledge and experience further confirm the reasonableness of hours proffered.” While the 10 court may rely on affidavits and its own knowledge and expertise, where specific objections are made a court’s order should consist of more than conclusory statements. The court’s order does not mention or enter any findings about the defendants’ detailed objections that the hours billed by plaintiffs’ attorneys for specified tasks display a lack of billing judgment. A district court should be mindful of its obligation to produce an order on attorneys fees that allows for “meaningful review” by articulating the decisions made and supplying principled reasons for those decisions. See Norman, 836 F.2d at 1304. The more specific the objections to a fee application are, the more specific the findings and reasons for rejecting those objections can be. The second preliminary matter that needs to be addressed is the plaintiffs’ complaint about the precision of the defendants’ objections on the billing judgment issues. Instead of complaining that the objections are not precise enough, the plaintiffs protest that the objections are too precise, that the defendants’ approach is too itemized. Citing Commissioner, INS v. Jean, 496 U.S. 154, 161-62, 110 S. Ct. 2316, 2320-21 (1990), plaintiffs say that instead of looking at the number of hours spent on specific tasks, the proper approach is to look at the case as a whole to determine if the total number of hours spent is 11 reasonable. The Jean decision does not support that position. The plaintiff in Jean was awarded attorney fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(1)(A), because the government’s position in the underlying litigation was not “substantially justified.” The government argued that the plaintiff should not be entitled to attorney fees for litigating the fee matter unless the government’s position about the fee issue itself was not “substantially justified.” The Supreme Court rejected that position, reasoning that fee shifting statutes “favor[] treating a case as an inclusive whole, rather than as atomized line-items.” Jean, 496 U.S. at 161-62, 110 S. Ct. at 2320. Nothing about the holding in Jean precludes a fee opponent from challenging a fee request on the basis that an excessive number of hours were billed on some discrete task within the case. Moreover, our decisions contemplate a task-bytask examination of the hours billed. See, e.g., Loranger, 10 F.3d at 782-83 (noting that 100 hours for the task of preparing a fee request in the case was excessive); Duckworth v. Whisenant, 97 F.3d 1393, 1398 (11th Cir. 1996) (disallowing redundant hours billed for the task of deposing witnesses). The third and final preliminary matter concerns the method the defendants used to parcel out among the various litigation tasks all of the hours claimed by 12 the plaintiffs. The imprecision of the billing records submitted by the plaintiffs makes it difficult, if not impossible, to calculate with any precision the number of hours an attorney devoted to a particular task in this litigation. The records often lump together all the tasks performed by an attorney on a given day without breaking out the time spent on each task. The defendants, in attempting to analyze the billing records and calculate the number of hours spent by an attorney on a given task, responded to the imprecision of the records by dividing the total hours billed by an attorney on a given day by the number of tasks listed and then assigning an equal amount of time to each task. Plaintiffs, who are responsible for the problem to begin with, have not suggested a better solution for it. Not wishing to penalize the defendants for plaintiffs’ failure to keep more precise records, we will accept the defendants’ method for parceling out hours to tasks, and we will rely in this opinion on the resulting numbers. We turn now to the defendants’ arguments about the number of hours the plaintiffs’ attorneys claimed for various tasks, beginning with their argument that excessive hours were billed for drafting the complaint.
In addition to billing 21.74 hours for gathering pre-filing factual 13 information and 38.46 hours for pre-filing legal research, the plaintiffs’ attorneys billed 147.88 hours solely for the drafting work done on the complaint. The defendants argue that 147.88 hours for drafting a complaint, even one that is 179 paragraphs (58 pages) long, is patently excessive and that private clients would not be willing to pay for that many hours. (The attorneys billed $34,773.85 for those 147.88 hours of drafting work alone.) The defendants contend that 38 of the 179 paragraphs of the complaint were taken in whole or in part from the filings in a similar case, ACLU v. Reno, 929 F.Supp 824 (E.D. Pa. 1996), aff’d, Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S. Ct. 2329 (1997). That other case, which had been filed at the time this case commenced, concerned a First Amendment challenge to a federal statute prohibiting the transmission of pornographic and indecent speech to minors over the Internet. The plaintiffs respond by noting that their attorneys submitted sworn affidavits stating that their billing records accurately reflect the time required to draft the complaint in this case. Citing Perkins v. Mobile Hous. Bd., 847 F.2d 735, 738 (11th Cir. 1988), they argue that the district court properly declined to exclude any of the claimed hours for drafting the complaint because, they say, [s]worn testimony [by plaintiffs' attorneys] that . . . [they] took the time claimed 14 is evidence of considerable weight on the issue of the time required in the usual case and therefore, it must appear that the time claimed is obviously and convincingly excessive under the circumstances. But giving weight to sworn statements of fee applicants does not mean accepting those statements as gospel. Courts should not delegate their duty to examine and judge the reasonableness of fee applications to the applicants. Having conducted our own review of the complaint and the entire record in this case, we conclude that 147.88 hours for drafting the complaint was excessive–even “obviously and convincingly excessive”–under the circumstances of this case. While there may be a complaint that reasonably requires 147.88 hours to draft, the complaint in this case is not it. Thirty-six of the complaint’s paragraphs contain information taken in whole or in part from the complaint and the proposed findings of fact in the ACLU v. Reno case.2 So, 20 percent of the complaint’s 179 paragraphs are 2 Although the defendants contend that 38 of the complaint’s paragraphs were adapted from the ACLU v. Reno filings, our review of the documents leads us to conclude that the actual number is 36. Compare R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 1,3, 4, 9, 16, 17, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 47, 50, 87, 110, 111, 112, 114, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 163, 177, 178 with R 4: 36 Ex. E ¶ ¶ 1, 5, 7, 10, 24, 25, 38, 40, 44, 46, 47, 49, 53, 62, 80, 81, 82, 87, 150, 153, 174, 175 and R4: 36 Ex. F ¶ ¶ 27, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161, 162, 286, 291, 292, 303, 304, 305, 308, 485, 15 derived from publicly available filings in another case. Those filings were not only publicly available, they were also easily accessible to these plaintiffs’ attorneys because two of them were also attorneys for the plaintiffs in ACLU v. Reno. An attorney is not entitled to be paid in a case for the work he or another attorney did in some other case. That reason alone would justify holding that the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude any of the 147.88 hours billed for drafting the complaint. See Norman, 836 F.2d at 1301 (district court must exclude excessive, redundant, or unnecessary hours from the fee award). There is another reason, too. When the plaintiffs filed their complaint they also filed a motion for preliminary injunction, a brief, and fourteen affidavits (one for each of the named plaintiffs). The attorneys billed 97.8 hours for preparation of those affidavits. The defendants have not directly challenged that aspect of the fee application, so the full amount of the hours spent on the fourteen affidavits will be paid.3 No problem there. 489, 554, 555, 556, 559, 567, 570,572, 574, 575, 587, 606, 615, 620, 665. 3 We note that the defendants did argue that it was unnecessary to use 14 plaintiffs to challenge the unconstitutionality of the statute, and it therefore follows that 14 affidavits were not necessary to support the preliminary injunction motion. However, that argument is conclusory and fails to convince us the district court clearly erred in finding as a fact that each of the 14 plaintiffs’ claims “was unique and necessary to illustrate the myriad effects of the [challenged] statute on the 16 The problem is here. Our comparison of the fourteen affidavits with the 179-paragraph complaint reveals that the bulk of the complaint is simply an edited version of those affidavits. Paragraphs 4-17 and 87-171 of the complaint contain background information on the plaintiffs and describe the impact of the Georgia Act on their activities. All of the information in those 99 paragraphs is taken from the fourteen affidavits.4 It has merely been re-edited. In addition, another 48 paragraphs of the complaint (paragraphs 26-73) contain general background allegations about computer communications, the Internet, and anonymous communication on the Internet. Virtually all of the allegations in those 48 paragraphs is derived from information contained in one of those fourteen affidavits the plaintiffs filed in support of the motion for a preliminary diverse class of Internet users.” 4 Compare R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 4, 87-91, 170-71 with R1: 3 Ex M ¶ ¶ 2, 4, 5, 7, 9-12; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 5, 92-96, 170-71 with R1: 3 Ex G ¶ ¶ 2, 4, 6-8, 10, 11; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 6, 97100, 170 with R1: 3 Ex J ¶ ¶ 2-4, 6-8; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 7, 101-103, 170 with R1: 3 Ex I ¶ ¶ 2-6; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 8, 104-109, 168, 170, 171 with R1: 3 Ex F ¶ ¶ 1-5, 9-12, 17-19, 22, 25-28; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 9, 110-115,168, 170-71 with R1: 3 Ex A ¶ ¶ 1-5, 9, 11-13; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 10, 116-121, 169-71 with R1: 3 Ex E ¶ ¶ 1-2, 4, 9-15, 14; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 11, 122-132, 169-71 with R1: 3 Ex D ¶ ¶ 2-7, 9, 11-13, 15-18; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 12, 133-138 with R1: 3 Ex N ¶ ¶ 2-8, 13-15; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 13, 139-144, 168, 170 with R1: 3 Ex C ¶ ¶ 1, 3-5, 7- 11; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 14, 145-150, 169-71 with R1: 3 Ex K ¶ ¶ 2-8, 10; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 15, 151155, 169-71 with R1: 3 Ex L ¶ ¶ 2-8; R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 16, 156-160, 169-71 with R1: 3 Ex H ¶ ¶ 1, 5-7, 10-13, 16, 17; and R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 17, 161-168, 170, 171 with R1: 3 Ex B ¶ ¶ 1, 2, 4-15, 18, 19. 17 injunction.5 All together, 147 of the 179 paragraphs in the complaint, or 82 percent of them, are edited versions of the contemporaneously filed affidavits, the work on which was billed separately and will be paid.6 Only 32 paragraphs in the complaint are not derived from the affidavits. Of those 32 paragraphs, four7 contain information taken from the ACLU v. Reno complaint, three8 consist of verbatim quotations of the allegedly unconstitutional Georgia act challenged by the plaintiffs, and one9 simply realleges the previous 174 paragraphs. Thus, of the 179 paragraphs, only 24 consist of material not derived from some other source. Under these circumstances, and given the fact that the attorneys have billed and will be paid an additional 97.8 hours to prepare the affidavits, the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude as excessive some of the 147.88 hours billed for drafting the complaint. 5 Compare R1: 1 ¶ ¶ 26-73 with R1: 3 Ex A ¶ ¶ 14-61. 6 There is some overlap between these 147 paragraphs consisting of information taken from the affidavits and the previously referenced 36 paragraphs taken from the ACLU v. Reno filings. Specifically, 32 of the 147 paragraphs derived from the affidavits also contain information taken from the ACLU v. Reno filings. 7 R1:1 ¶ ¶ 1, 3, 177, and 178. 8 R1:1 ¶ ¶ 21-23. 9 R1:1 ¶ 175. 18 Having concluded that a substantial number of the 147.88 hours must be excluded as excessive, the question arises whether we must remand to the district court the issue of the proper number of hours to exclude, or whether we should decide it ourselves. Although we sometimes remand fee determination issues to the district court for further consideration, we have discretion to decide such issues at the appellate level. As we pointed out in Norman, “[f]or decades the law in this circuit has been that ‘[t]he court, either trial or appellate, is itself an expert on the question and may consider its own knowledge and experience concerning reasonable and proper fees and may form an independent judgment either with or without the aid of witnesses as to value.” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1303 (quoting Campbell v. Green, 112 F.2d 143, 144 (5th Cir. 1940)) (emphasis added). Accordingly, “where the time or fees claimed seem expanded or there is a lack of documentation or testimonial support the [appellate] court may make the award on its own experience.” Id. We have relied on our expertise to make fee determinations in several instances without remanding the issue to the district court. See, e.g., B-M-G Inv. Co. v. Continental/Moss Gordin, Inc., 437 F.2d 892, 893 (5th Cir. 1971) (reducing the fee award by $75,000 after determining the award was excessive); 19 In the Matter of TMT Trailer Ferry, Inc., 577 F.2d 1296, 1299-1300 (5th Cir. 1978) (reducing the fee award by over $100,000 after determining the award was excessive); Knighton v. Watkins, 616 F.2d 795, 800-01 (5th Cir. 1980) (relying on this Court’s own expertise to determine a reasonable hourly rate for purposes of calculating the fee award); In the Matter of U.S. Golf Corp., 639 F.2d 1197, 1206-07 (5th Cir. 1981) (same).10 At least three of our sister circuits also have recognized that appellate courts possess the expertise and discretionary authority to resolve certain fee determination issues at the appellate level without the need for further remand. See Halderman v. Pennhurst State School & Hosp., 49 F.3d 939, 942-45 (3d Cir. 1995); Rum Creek Coal Sales, Inc. v. Caperton, 31 F.3d 169, 181 (4th Cir. 1994); Sidag Aktiengesellschaft v. Smoked Foods Prods. Co., Inc., 960 F.2d 564, 566-67 (5th Cir. 1992). For appellate courts to resolve, instead of remand, fee determination issues is consistent with the Supreme Court’s directive in Hensley, 461 U.S. at 437 & n.12, 103 S. Ct. at 1941 & n.12, that a request for attorney fees should not result 10 We may not, however, make the fee award at the appellate level in cases where an evidentiary hearing is required to clarify disputed issues of fact and an evidentiary hearing was requested, but denied, before the district court. See King v. McCord, 621 F.2d 205, 206 (5th Cir. 1980). 20 in “a second major litigation.” By deciding such matters ourselves where possible, we dispose of issues that ought not be extensively litigated, and we exercise an appellate court’s authority to “direct the entry of such appropriate judgment . . . as may be just under the circumstances.” 28 U.S.C. § 2106. Putting an end to attorneys fees issues as soon as possible is, to borrow a phrase from Holmes, a “concession to the shortness of life.” Reeve v. Dennett, 11 N.E. 938, 944 (Mass. 1887). In this instance, we will exercise our discretion and apply our own expertise in fee determination issues to resolve the issue of how many hours should be excluded as excessive for the task of drafting the complaint in this case. Keeping in mind that “the measure of reasonable hours is determined by the profession’s judgment of the time that may be conscionably billed and not the least time in which it might theoretically have been done,” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1306, we conclude that lead counsel McClain and Weber should have been able to draft a complaint comprised primarily of material derived from other sources and with only 24 completely original paragraphs in no more than 40 hours (i.e., 20 hours each). The additional 107.88 hours billed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys for drafting the complaint–13.89 by McClain, 2.93 by 21 Weber, 1.31 by Thorpe, 7.90 by Hansen, and 81.85 by Beeson–should be excluded.
The defendants contend that the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude any of the hours that the plaintiffs’ five attorneys billed, exclusive of research, for drafting and reviewing the three substantive briefs filed before the district court. Those three briefs, which totaled less than 100 pages of written work product, included a brief in support of the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, a reply brief in support of their motion for preliminary injunction, and a brief opposing the defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint. The defendants argue that a review of the plaintiffs’ attorneys’ billing records does not indicate any sort of division of labor among the attorneys for their work in drafting the briefs. Instead, the records indicate substantial duplication of effort. While the defendants concede that the hours of McClain, Weber, and Thorpe were legitimate, they argue that the district court abused its discretion by not excluding as redundant the hours of Hansen and Beeson. We agree. 22 The “fee applicant bears the burden of establishing entitlement and documenting the appropriate hours.” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1303. Redundant hours must be excluded from the reasonable hours claimed by the fee applicant. See Hensley, 461 U.S. at 434, 103 S. Ct. at 1939-40. Such “hours generally occur where more than one attorney represents a client.” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1301-02. However, [t]here is nothing inherently unreasonable about a client having multiple attorneys. Id. at 1302. For that reason, a reduction for redundant hours is warranted only if the attorneys are unreasonably doing the same work. An award for time spent by two or more attorneys is proper as long as it reflects the distinct contribution of each lawyer to the case and the customary practice of multiple-lawyer litigation. Johnson v. University College of Univ. of Ala. in Birmingham, 706 F.2d 1205, 1208 (11th Cir. 1983). Thus, a fee applicant is entitled to recover for the hours of multiple attorneys if he satisfies his burden of showing that the time spent by those attorneys reflects the distinct contribution of each lawyer to the case and is the customary practice of multiplelawyer litigation. But the fee applicant has the burden of showing that, and where there is an objection raising the point, it is not a make-believe burden. 23 In this case, the billing records indicate that the plaintiffs threw five attorneys at the task of drafting the three briefs. The three Atlanta attorneys billed a total of 119.99 hours on drafting the briefs: McClain 55.37 hours, Weber 42.00 hours, and Thorpe 22.62 hours, all of which the defendants concede were legitimate. In addition to those hours, however, the plaintiffs seek to recover for Hansen's 29.50 hours and Beeson's 82.12 hours, a total of 111.62 more hours. We conclude that the plaintiffs have not met their burden of showing that the hours billed by Hansen and Beeson reflected a distinct contribution on the part of those attorneys to the task of drafting the briefs.11 Missing from the billing records of all of the plaintiffs' attorneys is any indication of the distinct contribution each attorney made to the task of drafting the briefs. Nor do any of the attorneys' affidavits clarify the billing records by describing what each attorney contributed. The closest the affidavits come in this regard is the conclusory statement in Weber's affidavit that the hours he billed represent a specific division of labor with co-counsel. That statement gives no clue as to what that division of labor might have been. After the 11 We do not reach the issue of whether assigning five lawyers to drafting briefs reflects the customary practice in cases of this type. 24 plaintiffs were apprised in the district court of the defendants’ specific objections to Hansen’s and Beeson's hours, they did not take the opportunity to supplement the record--either through additional affidavits or by requesting an evidentiary hearing--to show the distinct contribution, if any, that those two lawyers made to the task of drafting the briefs. Accordingly, we conclude that the plaintiffs did not carry their burden of showing they were entitled to recover for the hours of each of the attorneys employed on the task of drafting the briefs, and therefore that the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude the hours Hansen and Beeson billed for drafting the briefs: 29.50 for Hansen and 82.12 for Beeson. c. Preparing for and Attending the Status Conference The defendants next contend that the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude any of the 51 hours billed by four of the plaintiffs’ attorneys for preparation for, travel to, and attendance at a status conference before the district court in Atlanta. The defendants argue that the presence of four attorneys, particularly two who flew in from New York, was excessive given that the status conference lasted only forty-minutes and did not address the merits of the case. Instead, they argue that the preparation for and attendance 25 at the status conference could have been handled in no more than 2 hours by a single attorney in Atlanta. We agree that the presence of four attorneys at a forty-minute status conference that did not address the merits of the case was patently excessive. See Johnson v. Georgia Highway Express, Inc., 488 F.2d 714, 717 (5th Cir. 1974) (The time billed for excessive lawyers in a courtroom or conference when fewer would do, may obviously be discounted.”) abrogated on other grounds by Blanchard v. Bergeron, 489 U.S. 87, 109 S. Ct. 939 (1989). The presence of two attorneys from New York was particularly unnecessary given that lead counsel McClain and Weber, both of whom are located in Atlanta where the conference took place, were available and attended. Nor was it necessary for four separate attorneys to bill time preparing for such a short, non-merits related status conference. In our judgment, based on a review of the record and all the circumstances, we conclude that lead counsel McClain and Weber should not have needed more than 8 hours between them (i.e., 4 hours each) to prepare for and attend the status conference.12 12 While we agree with the defendants that it is possible that the preparation for and attendance at the status conference could have been limited to 2 hours, we also recognize that the measure of reasonable hours is determined by the 26 We find unavailing the plaintiffs’ contention, raised for the first time at oral argument, that the extensive preparation for and presence of four attorneys at the status conference was required because they expected there to be argument on the merits of the preliminary injunction motion. The plaintiffs do not point to any evidence at all in the record to support the claim that they expected argument on the merits. Moreover, it is unreasonable to bill hours based on an unfounded expectation that there might be argument on the merits when a simple call or letter to the district court judge's chambers would have clarified the agenda of the status conference. Accordingly, we conclude that the district court abused its discretion by not excluding as excessive any of the hours billed by the four attorneys for preparing and attending the status conference. In addition, because the attendance of Hansen and Beeson at the conference was excessive, their travel time to the conference should have been excluded. The hours that should have been excluded in this regard are: 11.25 of McClain's hours; .7 of Weber's hours; 21.4 of Hansen's hours; and 9.65 of Beeson's hours. profession’s judgment of the time that may be conscionably billed and not the least time in which it might theoretically have been done.” Norman, 836 F.2d at 1306. 27 d. Preparing for and Attending the Internet Demonstration Prior to the district court’s ruling on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs put on a live, in-court demonstration of Internet technology. That demonstration consisted primarily of the plaintiffs’ expert, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor, describing various features and characteristics of Internet technology for two hours. Although the plaintiffs sent four lawyers to the demonstration, only McClain spoke, and his role was essentially limited to introducing the expert.13 The defendants contend that the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude any of the hours billed by four of the plaintiffs’ attorneys for preparation for, travel to, and attendance at the two-hour Internet demonstration. The defendants argue that, at a minimum, because only McClain spoke at the demonstration, the hours billed by the other attorneys who attended the demonstration, including the travel time of Hansen and Beeson from New York, should have been excluded as unnecessary. In addition, they point out that four attorneys billed over 8 hours each to meet with the expert and review the two- 13 McClain's words cover less than five pages of the fifty-four page transcript of the demonstration. 28 hour presentation the day before it was put on. The defendants argue that McClain should have been able to handle those tasks on his own and therefore the time billed by the other lawyers was redundant.14 We agree that the presence of four attorneys at the demonstration was patently excessive. The demonstration was an opportunity for the plaintiffs’ expert to provide the district court with technical knowledge on the Internet. It was not a hearing to decide legal or factual issues requiring the participation of so many attorneys. Accordingly, we conclude that while the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the plaintiffs to recover the hours billed by McClain, the only lawyer who played an active role at the demonstration, and Weber, the other lead counsel in Atlanta, for attending the demonstration, it was an abuse of discretion not to exclude as excessive the hours billed by the two additional attorneys for traveling to and attending the demonstration. See Johnson, 488 F.2d at 717 (The time billed for excessive lawyers in a courtroom 14 The defendants also argue that the plaintiffs’ attorneys impermissibly billed hours for performing non-legal services in connection with the demonstration, such as obtaining equipment, and that those hours should be excluded. Because defendants did not raise this argument before the district court, we will not consider it on appeal. See, e.g., Odum v. Clark, 748 F.2d 1538, 1543 (11th Cir. 1984). 29 or conference when fewer would do, may obviously be discounted.”). The time that should have been excluded in this regard are 12.8 hours for Hansen and 11 hours for Beeson. We also believe that having four lawyers meet with the expert and review his presentation the day before the demonstration constitutes duplicative effort, absent some explanation why a squad of attorneys was necessary. As discussed above, the fee applicant may recover for the time of multiple attorneys spent on some task if he carries his burden of showing that the time spent by those attorneys reflects the distinct contribution of each lawyer to the case and the customary practice of multiple-lawyer litigation. The plaintiffs did not carry that burden. Neither the billing records nor the affidavits filed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys shed any light on the distinct contribution, if any, each of the four attorneys made to the task of meeting the expert and reviewing his presentation the day before it was made. The billing records merely describe the time as follows: “review presentation with co-counsel and Klein” (McClain) ; “[m]eet with Kline and work on demonstration” (Weber); “[p]repare for court” (Hansen); “[p]repare Klein, expert for hearing” (Beeson). Nor did the plaintiffs, once they were apprised in the district court of the 30 defendants’ objection to those hours, take the opportunity to supplement the record--either through additional affidavits or by requesting an evidentiary hearing--to show the distinct contribution of each lawyer. Accordingly, the district court abused its discretion by not excluding the hours billed by three of the attorneys (those other than McClain) for the task of meeting with the expert and reviewing the presentation the day before the demonstration. The hours that should have been excluded in this regard are: 8.9 for Weber, 8 for Hansen, and 9.8 for Beeson. e. Conferencing among the attorneys The defendants contend that the district court abused its discretion by failing to exclude excessive hours for internal communications among the plaintiffs’ attorneys (e.g., telephone conferences and e-mail). Because they did not raise this argument before the district court, we will not consider it on appeal. See, e.g., Odum v. Clark, 748 F.2d 1538, 1543 (11th Cir. 1984).