Judge Wants Review of Legal Bills After Firms Reveal 9,000 Hours Of ‘Inadvertent’ Double-Billed Times
A federal judge plans to appoint a special master to investigate whether prominent law firms in Boston and other cities padded their legal bills by millions in a class-action lawsuit against State Street Bank, saying the lawyers may have to pay up to $2 million, in advance, to fund the investigation, reports The Boston Globe.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf said he wants a review legal bills submitted by Thornton Law Firm of Boston, Labaton Sucharow of New York, and seven other firms to justify the fees they received from the case last year, writes Andrea Estes.
A Boston Globe review of the records submitted to justify the legal bills showed that three law firms submitted bills for the same lawyers, and often with different hourly rates. And the hourly rates claimed in the firms’ filings, which ranged from $335 to $500 an hour, were often 10 times more than what the lawyers normally earned.
Read the Boston Globe article.
