Court Opinion

ID: 9806582
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 19:14:41.585188+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:09:56.628103
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join the disposition, with one very small exception: I would disapprove, as an abuse of discretion, the reduction of the hours Tsai spent preparing the fee petition to one hour.
In my experience, no lawyer could competently and accurately draft an initial fee request, however routine, in one hour, with a template or without, and with review by others or without. Filing a fee request requires checking local case law as to rates for comparable counsel; reviewing the hours spent and making billing judgment ■ decisions; and collecting information on and explaining the professional background of the various billing lawyers and paralegals. To suggest all this should have been done in an hour is to encourage the filing of sloppy, unchecked work, which is not in the interest of the client, the courts, or opposing counsel. When the total number of hours billed for preparing the document was under five, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the reason for the reduction was the district court’s overall disapproval of the Lemberg firm’s manner of representation in Nevada, rather than a dispassionate determination of the appropriateness of the time spent.