WA 5 - Motion for Attorney Fees

Your assignment is to draft a Motion for Attorney's Fees and Supporting Affidavit to Judge Cox . You are to use your own time records as the basis for the fee, billing at an hourly rate of $100. You cannot include time recorded by anyone else on your team or your professor even if that time reflects time expended by you but not recorded by you. You are not requesting expenses.

Team 1: assume that your client obtained a 12 month TPO after a one hour evidentiary hearing and add that one hour to the total hours requested.

Team 2: assume the facts as they took place in your case, obtaining a 12 month TPO by consent.

Team 3: assume that Petitioner won the hearing in your case.

A sample motion for attorney fees was handed out in class on March 26 and has been uploaded to All-Classs in Clio, but you are free to look for other sample attorney fee motions. Please note the sample must be modified to be appropriate for your motion. The applicable statutory authority to cite is O.C.G.A. § 19-13-4(a)(10) from the Family Violence Act. You are encouraged to delete unnecessary “legalese” from any sample form and use plain language that is professionally appropriate.

Your motion and affidavit should not exceed 2 pages. The standards to follow are set forth in David Lucas Co. v. Lewis, 293 Ga.App. 288, 666 S.Ed. 576, 581-82 (2008) and Galvez v Cuevas (S.D. Fla. 2009). For purposes of this assignment treat the Galvez case as decided by the Georgia Court of Appeals.

•  You now have your time records for your work in your DV case. A hard copy has been handed out to you in class and an electronic copy is saved in your Clio class matter (“Class-Name”). You may not change your Clio entries and must use the document we have provided.

•  Redact and/or reduce any billing entries necessary to reflect good billing judgment.

•  Exercise “billing judgment by excluding excessive, redundant, or otherwise unnecessary” hours, which are hours “that would be unreasonable to bill to a client and therefore to one's adversary”  Galvez

•  Consider whether to claim hours for which the  subject matter of the time expenditure description may be attacked as not  “set out with sufficient particularity” David Lucas Co

•  Keep in mind that the party seeking attorney fees must produce “meticulous, contemporaneous time records.” Galvez

•  Time entries which “lump[] together time spent on assorted tasks” may be disallowed. Galvez

•  Time expended for “clerical and administrative tasks” is not properly included in a motion for attorney fees. Galvez.

•  Remember that the opposing party will see your motion including the attached times records, redact any privileged and confidential information from your bill before attaching it to your pleading by using a black marker.

•  Your time records will constitute the basis for your bill and will serve as the exhibit to your affidavit. 

•  Bring a hard copy of your affidavit and exhibit with you to class next week.