E.D. Arkansas cuts social security fee award 7.7%, including for clerical work

What happened

The fee applicant sought $7,439.75 in Equal Access to Justice Act fees for 30.25 hours. The court awarded $6,867.25, a reduction of $572.50 or 7.7%. It cut 0.25 hours for clerical work preparing an IFP application for delivery, 0.25 hours for a vague phone call entry, 0.25 hours for duplicative attorney-client correspondence, 0.3 hours for duplicative and excessive entries, 0.75 hours for time not reasonably spent, and 0.5 hours on a fees-on-fees entry.

What the court said

And the billing entry from 3/17/23, which concerns preparing the IFP application for FedEx delivery, is indeed clerical and thus not compensable.

because it does not explain what the phone discussion with Plaintiff was about, and because the subject of the call is not otherwise apparent from reviewing the timeline of litigation, the Court cannot assess its reasonableness

The court also reduced the award for: duplicative staffing, duplicative staffing, excessive hours, excessive hours, fees on fees.

Why it matters

The ruling shows that courts will reduce fee awards for time entries that do not explain the task, for clerical tasks billed as legal work, and for duplicative or excessive staffing, even when the overall reduction is modest.

How to keep this out of your fee petition

• Leave purely clerical work off the fee petition.
• Describe paralegal tasks so the substantive work is clear.
• Split mixed entries into their substantive and clerical parts.

Cite this ruling

See hourly rates the E.D. Arkansas approves and attorney fee motions in Arkansas federal courts.

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