Talk:Attorney's fee

Retainer - the exact meaning is dubious[edit]

Resolved

– The use of "retainer" here now links to a specific article; any definitional problems should be discussed at that article's talk page.

The retainer, according to my legal dictionary is a contract between a client and a lawyer - no mention of money is here mentioned at all, but only an agreement to pay money. Be careful in mentioning such things as there are considerable difference depending on the jurisdiciton you are in: USA, UK, Australia, NZ, India and even civil law countries: eg. France etc. TheGrandMaster1 13:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is the correct title of this article?[edit]

Resolved

– Article title has been stable for years; discussion of US vs. UK differences moved to merge discussion below.

If this article is about what happens in various places in the world and is comparative in nature, what is the correct title? If it's just a U.S. article then the title is, I'm sure, fine. But then there needs to be a broader article to consider practice elsewhere where there are different names, e.g. costs in the UK. What would that article be called? I don't have a problem with Attorney's fees but I'm not sure it's right. In particular, in the UK, not all lawyers are attorneys (but they all want paying!).Cutler (talk) 20:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

POV tag[edit]

Resolved

– No actual dispute or other discussion has been in evidence for over 4 years.

This concerns POV tag cleanup. Whenever an POV tag is placed, it is necessary to also post a message in the discussion section stating clearly why it is thought the article does not comply with POV guidelines, and suggestions for how to improve it. This permits discussion and consensus among editors. From WP tag policy: Drive-by tagging is strongly discouraged. The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort. Better yet, edit the topic yourself with the improvements. This statement is not a judgement of content, it is only a cleanup of frivolously and/or arbitrarily placed tags. No discussion, no tag.Jjdon (talk) 00:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal[edit]

Resolved

– No consensus for merge after almost 4 years, and merge would violate conventions by combining articles about different topics.

We need a "headline" article that:

Explains what this is about;
Makes comparisons between jurisdictions:
- US
- Common law - US
- Civil
- ...
Points to specific articles about jurisdictions (e.g. Costs (English law)).
Points to article about costs in criminal cases. I know zilch about how this works outside England and Wales.

Court costs or Legal costs feel like better titles than Attorneys' fee. Perhaps Attorneys' fee is the title of the US article. I don't think that there's so much in the Court costs article that adds to Attorneys' fee article but the title is better for a global article.Cutler (talk) 18:34, 13 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also a barrister is not an attorney (and not all attorneys are lawyers of course). I know its pedantic, but that's why "attorney" is never used as a generic term for lawyer in England and Wales and indeed its rarely used for an attorney at law at all. There are really two parts to this article: the first is what we would call the inter partes costs -- things that might be awarded in proceedings by the court, and the second is the client's own costs. What the client pays their solicitor or other lawyer is up to them, but inter partes costs may include disbursements that are paying for non-lawyers' work (such as accountants) as well as lawyers whose costs are disbursements (such as counsel usually), so its inaccurate to call what is awarded in court "attorney fees" because they aren't. Francis Davey (talk) 19:49, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What about billable hours? Amazingly wikipedia doesn't have an article on billable hours -- other than referring to a Canadian T.V. show Billable Hours. In any event an attorney's fee can be charged without something ever remotely seeing a Court. If change were to occur I would prefer that an article on billable hours was started. Americasroof (talk) 14:18, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting idea but lots of lawyers don't work on billable hours (or billable time) there's lots of fixed fee work. Historically pretty much all barristers' work was fixed fee (known as a brief fee plus a per day refresher if a trial overran) and lots of other work is done in that way. Francis Davey (talk) 22:36, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the proposed merge. One big problem is that costs do not include attorney's fees in nearly all U.S. jurisdictions (Nevada is the only exception I am aware of). In the U.S., costs include only non-attorney fee items like witness fees, photocopying fees, deposition fees, jury fees, etc. This is why contracts in the U.S. that intend to override the American rule always have a clause stating that "the losing party shall pay the winning party's costs and attorney's fees." Also keep in mind that attorney's fee is the dominant term of art used in thousands of reported U.S. cases. --Coolcaesar (talk) 04:16, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure but its a term that is never used in any case in my jurisdiction and, I suspect, in any other common law jurisdiction. Sure, the US is big (300 million people) but the common law world outside the US is bigger and doesn't use the term "attorney" to mean lawyer. The title as it stands is US POV, we need a more neutral term. It may be that some variant on "costs" is wrong. Is there a collective term used in the US for all sums a party may be required to pay post-judgment to defray costs incurred by the other side (including attorney's fees where they are awarded) but not including damages or other compensatory sums? Francis Davey (talk) 10:02, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We don't really have such a term. Nevada lawyers would say costs (due to the unique structure of NRCP 68), but in all other states, they say "costs and attorney's fees," "costs and fees," or something like that. I think the better solution is to keep this article, have a separate broader article on lawyer's fees, and link to this one as the article specific to the United States. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of the Commonwealth vs. US disputations in this thread, the article couldn't be merged with court costs since they're not the same thing. There are all sorts of lawyer/attorney/law firm fees for all sorts of legal activities that have nothing at all to do with courts and the fees generated by them, like closing a real estate deal, drafting a will, representation in a motor vehicle department or zoning board hearing, etc., etc. I'm marking this "resolved" and removing the merge tag, since this was proposed in 2008 and has not gained consensus. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 20:08, 10 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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Poor structure, content, out-of-date[edit]

In my opinion, this article needs to be completely rewritten. Out-of-date information and references should be generalized or updated and made evergreen. 2601:401:503:62B0:4900:5600:477E:FB7A (talk) 22:29, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]