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Attorney Fees In Class Action Settlements: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Study of two comprehensive class action case data sets covering 1993-2002 shows that the amount of client recovery is overwhelmingly the most important determinant of the attorney fee award. Even in cases in which the courts engage in the lodestar calculation (the product of reasonable hours and a reasonable hourly rate), the client's recovery generally explains the pattern of awards better than the lodestar. Thus, the time and expense of a lodestar calculation may be wasteful. We also find no robust evidence that either recoveries for plaintiffs or fees of their attorneys increased overtime. The mean fee award in common …

What Is A Reasonable Attorney Fee? An Empirical Study Of Class Action Settlements, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Determining an appropriate fee is a difficult task facing trial court judges in class action litigation. But courts rarely rely on empirical research to assess a fee’s reasonableness, due, at least in part, to the relative paucity of available information. Existing empirical studies of attorney fees in class action cases are limited in scope, and generally do not control for important variables. To help fill this gap, we analyzed data from all state and federal class actions with reported fee decisions from 1993 to 2002 in which the fee and class recovery could be determined with reasonable confidence.

We find …