Judge calls $3,000 hourly rate 'patently unreasonable' as lawyer billing soars

By David Thomas and Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, Oct 15 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com)

A California federal judge approved more than $22.6 million in legal fees this week in a $68 million privacy settlement with Google over its voice-activated assistant, but criticized some of the lawyers' billing rates, including a proposed $3,000 hourly rate that the court called "patently unreasonable."

US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose refused to accept the $3,000 rate for David Scott of plaintiffs' firm Scott + Scott and reduced it to $1,600 an hour for purposes of calculating the overall class action fee award.

"It is not unusual for named partners to charge more than other partners. And the court is cognizant that rates increase year to year. But not to $3,000 an hour," Freeman wrote. Still, the court granted the lawyers' request for 33% of the settlement fund and called the award reasonable and consistent with market rates.

Spokespersons for Scott + Scott and the US District Court for the Northern District of California declined to comment.

A $3,000 hourly rate may have struck the judge as an overreach in this case, but such figures are no longer a shock among top lawyers at major firms. Reuters has reported rates as high as $4,000 for prominent lawyers at Susman Godfrey. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Milbank and Quinn Emanuel are among firms with some partner rates over $3,000.

"Lawyers operate in a market, and for better or worse, $3,000 per hour is now very much market rate for top tier partners at large firms," Adam Levitin, a bankruptcy law professor at Georgetown University, said in an email.

Levitin and Nancy Rapoport, a fee examiner and law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the courts regularly approve hourly fees in that range for debtors' counsel in bankruptcy matters.

Law firm billing rates are typically not public, but lawyers are sometimes required to disclose them in certain cases like bankruptcies and class actions where judges must approve fees.

Rapoport said that while hourly rates can attract the most attention, it's the staffing on a case that drives up the costs.

"Too many people at a hearing, too many people at a meeting, or the wrong people doing the wrong kind of work. That drives up fees way more than the billable hour," she said.

Freeman did not criticize the plaintiffs' lawyers' staffing in the Google privacy case, and said they achieved an "excellent" settlement. Class action plaintiffs' lawyers typically work on contingency and don't receive fees if they lose.

Annual billing rate increases are key revenue and profit drivers for law firms. Hourly rates among large US firms grew by an average of 7% in 2025, according to a report this year by the Thomson Reuters Institute and Georgetown Law's Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession. The Thomson Reuters Institute and Reuters share the same parent company.

Scott + Scott said in its July fee request that its rates are partly based on the "prevailing market rates for attorneys and law firms in California that have comparable skill, experience, and qualifications," and defended its rates as reasonable.

Scott, managing partner of the 150-lawyer firm, billed about 64 hours as part of the lawsuit, records show, amounting to $194,100 in fees. Another lawyer at the firm, Daryl Scott, billed at $1,960 an hour in the lawsuit, according to billing records the firm submitted as part of its fee request.

The settlement resolves claims that Google's Assistant illegally recorded and disseminated private conversations after it was triggered, and used them to send targeted advertising. Google denied wrongdoing, but settled to avoid the risk, cost and uncertainty of litigation, court papers show.

A Google spokesperson said the company was pleased to resolve the case.

The judge used the hourly rates submitted by the plaintiffs' lawyers as part of her review of the compensation request. She applied a $1,600 rate cap on other plaintiffs' lawyers in the case. Daryl Scott had his hourly rate lowered from $1,960. Geoffrey Horn and Vincent Briganti of Lowey Dannenberg, which also represented the plaintiffs, had initially submitted hourly rates of $1,795.

Lowey attorneys declined to comment.

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