Concept
Reasonable Expenses
Reasonableness of the fee
Reasonable Expenses
Rule 1.5(a) reaches past the fee. A lawyer shall not make an agreement for, charge, or collect an unreasonable fee or an unreasonable amount for expenses, so the reasonableness command covers what the lawyer passes through to the client as well as what the lawyer earns.1 Two situations show the command at work: a firm prices its in-house services above what they cost, and a lawyer bills a lawyer's rate for work a clerk could do. In both, the client pays more than what was delivered is worth.
In-House Costs
Comment 1 to Rule 1.5 addresses a lawyer who seeks reimbursement for services performed in-house, such as copying and telephone charges. It offers two measures: a reasonable amount to which the client has agreed in advance, or an amount that reasonably reflects the actual costs the lawyer incurred.2 Each route gives the lawyer a defensible charge. The advance agreement fixes the number before the work begins, and the actual-cost measure supplies a neutral yardstick when the parties never discussed the subject. The agreement route still demands a reasonable amount, so a client's advance consent does not turn an inflated rate into a proper one.
Both routes serve a single limit. The lawyer should not turn in-house collateral services, from copying to electronic research fees, into an independent profit center that produces large returns beyond the actual costs the lawyer or firm bears.3 A lawyer who passes an expense through to the client is recovering what the firm bore. The comment gives the lawyer no margin on top of that cost.
An exam stem about copying or telephone charges usually supplies the two facts that decide the answer: whether the client agreed to the rate before the work began, and how the rate compares with what the service costs the firm.
Both firms charge for copies, so the bare existence of a charge decides nothing. What matters is the relationship between price and cost, and whether the client knew the price before the work was done.
Clerical Work at Lawyer Rates
A lawyer should not charge a client for a significant number of hours at high lawyer rates for work that requires no legal training or other professional skill and that non-lawyers commonly perform at a much lower cost.5 This is a fee problem and not an expense problem, yet it condemns the same thing: a price out of line with what the service is worth. A lawyer's hourly rate prices training and judgment. When the task is filing, indexing, or organizing exhibits, the client receives clerical work and is charged for something more.
The rule turns on the nature of the task, so accurate record keeping cannot satisfy it. An honest record of hours spent on binders and file folders proves the time was worked. It does nothing to make a lawyer's rate a reasonable price for that time. The word significant limits the rule from the other side: a few minutes of a lawyer's time spent sorting a file does not offend it, while forty hours of the same work at a full rate does.
The two scenes show how to read a question on this point. Ask whether the task required legal training or professional skill, and not whether the hours were real or whether a lawyer happened to perform the task. If it did not, and non-lawyers commonly do it for much less, then billing a large number of those hours at lawyer rates is unreasonable.