When one is petitioning for fees or contesting a petition for fees, it is usually incumbent to utilize the lodestar approach by determining the prevailing hourly market attorney rates in the relevant community (most often, the county or district of the litigation venue in question). Various methods are used by fee proponents or contestants, such as a matrix, billing surveys (such as those reported by the National Survey Center, the National Journal, and Legal Times), attorney declarations, and evidence of recent court awards of fees to attorneys with comparable qualifications handling similar cases. (Salazar v. District of Columbia, 123 F. Supp.2d 8, 14 (D.D.C. 2000).) Some of the common matrices used to establish reasonable hourly attorney rates are the Laffey Matrix or the Adjusted Laffey Matrix (or hybrids of one or the other). We now provide a discussion about how courts treat use of these matrices, whether accepting them, criticizing them, rejecting them outright, or adjusting them further.
Laffey Matrix. The Laffey matrix is an inflation-adjusted grid of hourly rates for lawyers of varying levels of experience in Washington D.C. used for many years by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for determining fees in litigation claims (especially civil rights litigation). This matrix was approved originally in Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 572 F. Supp. 354, 371-375 (D.D.C. 1983), aff’d in part, rev’d in part on other grounds, 746 F.2d 4 (D.C.Cir. 1984). The matrix starts with attorney’s fees rates previously adopted by the courts as reasonably reflecting the local market (1982 hourly rates for the Washington D.C. metropolitan areas approved by the D.C. Cir. in 1983) and then updates them by applying the change in the Metropolitan Washington area Consumer Price Index (CPI) to those 1982 rates. The U.S. Attorney in the DOJ continues to use a version of the Laffey matrix. It has been cited as good evidence of market hourly rates for attorneys practicing in the federal employment arbitration or gender discrimination areas of law. (See, e.g., Save Our Cumberland Mountains v. Hodel, 857 F.3d 1516, 1525 (D.C.Cir. 1988) (en banc) [federal employment arbitration]; Woodland v. Viacom, Inc., 255 F.R.D. 278, 280 (D.D.C. 2008) (approving Laffey matrix rates in gender discrimination action].)
Circuit Courts Not Condoning Use of Laffey Matrix. The Fourth Circuit has expressly disapproved reliance on the Laffey matrix, requiring instead that fee awards be based on prevailing market rates established by other forms of evidence (such as the proof listed in paragraph 1 above). (Robinson v. Equifax Information Services, LLC, 560 F.3d 235, 245 (4th Cir. 2009).) The Ninth Circuit recently questioned the reliability of this matrix and sustained a district judge’s refusal to use it, because (1) acceptance of the matrix for the D.C. area did not mean it is a sound basis for determining rates elsewhere (especially a legal market 3,000 miles away), and (2) it was questionable whether the matrix was a reliable measure of rates even in Alexandria, Virginia, located just across the river from Washington, D.C. (See Prison Legal News v. Schwarzenegger, 608 F.3d 446, 454 (9th Cir. 2010).)
In our Part 2 post in this area, we will explore criticisms of the Laffey Matrix, judicial sentiment on the Adjusted Laffey Matrix, and U.S. District Judge Walker’s own twist on using the Laffey Matrix.
For our previous posts on the Laffey Matrix, see our June 10, 2010 post and our March 5, 2009 post on the subject.