Law Commons^™

Court-Awarded "Reasonable" Fees: Forcing A Segregated Public Interest Bar?, Paul L. Robert

Fordham Urban Law Journal

In ensuring that each citizen has free and unabated access to the legal system, it is important to strengthen the public interest sector of the legal community. To allow for solo practitioners and firms to engage in public interest cases, it is vital that the court system apply consistent standards for fee awards so as to incentivize and adequately compensate attorneys for their work. This comment looks to the importance of reasonable fees in ensuring the availability of counsel and more importantly, the availability of effective counsel.