A female friend of mine recently received a settlement in a sexual harassment action against her employer during mediation. Upon receiving her (female) attorney’s final bill she was blown away to discover that her attorney charged her almost five times what the attorney estimated she would charge for the mediation. (The attorney was drinking alcohol during the Zoom mediation and settled for far less than she estimated she would get.) [continued below]

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[continued from post] The hours listed on the bill are pretty obviously inflated (55 hours for a mediation brief which my friend practically wrote herself–it copied and pasted the text of a very detailed summary my friend had provided to the attorney). What can she do? Should she even bother complaining? The attorney held back the amount of her exorbitant legal bill from the settlement money so she doesn’t know if there is a way to even get it back. This is in California. My friend feels like she was victimized at work with the harassment and now is being victimized again by a woman who was supposed to be advocating for her interests. I'm all for supporting fellow women in law but I feel like this is wrong. Am I way off base here?

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“Not legal advice” here but just how the process usually goes in fee disputes I’ve seen:

Dispute the fees immediately, and check the fee agreement for a clause if there’s, for example, terms about using a state bar fee arbitration for disputing fees.

Here’s a great resource to get started. https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/images/pamphlets/2015_HavingaFeeDisputeWithYourLawyer060815-web.pdf

What I usually see done is all documentation gets lined up. Emails, client files, work product, itemized invoice, retainer agreement, etc., anything you can imagine being worth time or billables.

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Thank you very much. Just discovered that she did dispute the fee with the attorney but the attorney won't budge.

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It looks like for California she’ll have to go through mandatory fee arbitration. Have her contact the county bar association where the services were provided for more info on next steps. (If there’s no local program, the state bar provides it.)


https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Attorneys/Attorney-Regulation/Mandatory-Fee-Arbitration

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