Tuesday, August 17, 2004
In Attorney Fees in Class Action Settlements: An Empirical Study, 1 J. of Empirical Legal Studies 27 (2004), Theodore Eisenberg (Cornell) & Geoffrey Miller (NYU) examine the amount of attorney fee awards as a percentage of the recovery in 10 areas of law for 1993-2002. Tax refund class actions had the lowest mean (13.1%) attorney fee awards among the subject areas studied. By way of comparison, the overall mean was 21.9%; the highest attorney fee awards were in civil rights (37.0%); and for securities law — the area with the most class actions — the mean was 24.1%.
