As this Reuters article reports, 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, opens new tab. Still, the court granted the lawyers' request for 33% of the settlement fund and called the award reasonable and consistent with market rates. 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.
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