Attorney's Fees Research Articles

Low‐income, low‐asset debtors in the U.S. bankruptcy system

AbstractThe United States' bankruptcy system faces a major problem: many consumers are too poor to file for bankruptcy, usually because they cannot afford the necessary attorney fees. Some consumers appear to spend months trying to save the funds to pay their attorneys, thus either delaying their bankruptcies or foregoing bankruptcy altogether when they fail to save enough money. Others file for repayment bankruptcy in order to pay attorney fees during the case, when liquidation bankruptcy is usually a better fit for consumers with low incomes and low asset levels. The most recent comprehensive bankruptcy reform, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), exacerbated these problems by implementing additional procedural requirements that resulted in attorneys raising their fees. These problems have led to calls for administrative bankruptcy, especially for low‐income, low‐asset (LILA)/no‐income, no‐asset (NINA) debtors. Administrative bankruptcy would make bankruptcy more accessible by lowering access costs, for example, by eliminating the need for consumers to hire attorneys. Administrative programs in the United States, however, have a history of long‐term decline, especially when these programs serve low‐income people. It has become a cliché that poor people's programs become poor programs. A better solution would be to eliminate the procedural requirements imposed by BAPCPA and simplify the decision consumers must make about which type of bankruptcy to use.

Race and Bankruptcy

African American bankruptcy filers are more likely to select Chapter 13 than other debtors, who opt instead for Chapter 7, which has higher success rates and lower attorney fees. Prior scholarship blames racial discrimination by bankruptcy attorneys. We present an alternative explanation: Chapter 13 offers benefits, including retention of assets such as cars and driver's licenses, that are more valuable to African American debtors because they have relatively long commutes. We take advantage of a 2011 policy in Chicago, which suspended driver's licenses of consumers with large traffic-related debts. The policy produced a large increase in Chapter 13 filings, especially by African Americans. Two mechanisms explain the disparate racial impact: African Americans were more likely to have traffic-related debts and they incurred greater costs from license suspension due to their relatively long commutes. When we match African Americans to other debtors with similar commutes, we find no racial difference in the propensity to file for Chapter 13. These findings suggest that racial disparities in bankruptcy reflect racial disparities in commuting.

Texas Attorney Fee Litigation under the Lodestar: Data on Appellate Cases Six Months After SCOTX Decision in Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, 578 S.W.3d 469 (Tex. 2019)

On April 26, 2019 the Texas Supreme Court handed down its seminal opinion in Rohrmoos v. UTSW DVA Healthcare and dramatically altered the litigation landscape in Texas by requiring lodestar-type evidence on reasonable and necessary hours and hourly rates in all attorney-fee shifting cases, whether based on contract or statute. See Rohrmoos Venture v. UTSW DVA Healthcare, LLP, No. 16-0006, 2019 WL 1873428 (Tex. Apr. 26, 2019). A few weeks later, the Court removed any doubt as to whether the same requirements applied when attorney’s fees were assessed as a sanction, and overruled contrary precedent at the intermediate appellate level. See Nath v. Texas Children’s Hospital, No. 17-0110, 576 S.W.3d 707 (Tex. June 21, 2019). This report presents data on the impact of the new SCOTX precedent on appellate cases that were already in the pipeline. It identifies all appellate opinions citing Rohrmoos that were handed down by Texas appellate courts through October 26, 2019; and a few that should have cited Rohrmoos, but did not. The current count of citing cases stands at 18, excluding Texas Supreme Court cases. Rohrmoos did not settle all fee-related legal questions and some of the since-decided lower-court cases are now being pursued in the Texas Supreme Court. The open questions include the following: 1. How appellate attorney’s fees can be proven using the lodestar method at trial before they have been incurred, so as to support a contingent award in a fixed dollar amount in the judgment. 2. Whether the lodestar approach applies to claims for unpaid fees asserted by attorneys against former clients when the attorney's fee bill is disputed and remains unpaid. 3. Whether the lodestar approach applies when an attorney or law firm seeks to recover from a client in quantum meruit in a situation where there is no express fee contract, or when a contingent contract is unenforceable under Texas Government Code §82.065. 4. Whether, when a fee claim is based on Chapter 38 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, the trial court may make the required factual determinations concerning a fee-shifting award via judicial notice in the absence of lodestar evidence submitted by a party seeking fees under that statute. 5. Under what circumstances the amount of attorney’s fees should be decided by the jury or by the judge, and what procedural vehicle may or should be employed to establish a fee claim by affidavit rather than through live expert testimony? 6. Whether a lay witness may testify on the factual components of the lodestar methodology for valuing legal services. 7. Whether reversal and remand or rendition is the proper remedy upon a determination on appeal that the evidentiary requirements established by Rohrmoos were not satisfied.

Trolling the U.S. and EU Patent System: Solved by a Loser-Pays-Attorney-Fees Regime?

Frivolous litigation over patent issues poses a significant barrier to innovation, especially in United States where so-called “patent trolls” or PAEs are responsible for most legal conflicts on patent issues. In comparison, Europe has far less PAE-activity than the United States, but the number of such cases in Europe has increased in recent years. Although the situation is complex, the differences between PAE-activity in Europe and the United States are most likely caused by the use of different legal frameworks for fee-shifting, i.e. the presence and absence of a loser-pays-attorney-fees regime, respectively. In analyzing the arguments for and against moving to a loser-pays system, this paper concludes that the existing troll problem can be reduced by adopting, as a standard practice, a system under which the loser must pay the winner’s attorney fees. It follows that a loser-pays-attorney-fees system disincentivizes PAEs from filing frivolous suits, increases the quality of patents in lawsuits, ensures a more equal bargaining position for defendants in settlement negotiations, and results in lower settlements. Nevertheless, this paper also cautions that the benefits of fee-shifting substantially depend on the mechanism chosen. Limiting the reimbursable fees by pre-determined caps might render fee-shifting less effective. However, placing no limits on reimbursable fees might disincentivize innovation and potentially threaten access to justice. Therefore, this paper recommends two features to find a right balance between the reimbursable costs subject to fee-shifting on the one hand, and innovation and access to justice on the other. First, legislative and judicial authorities are advised to implement certain procedural safeguards to shift only reasonable and proportionate attorney fees. This can be accomplished through an issue-based approach and/or the adoption of mandatory case management conferences. Second, automatic fee-shifting should be limited to “PAE losers” only. In determining which parties should be exempted from automatic fee-shifting, this paper suggests, in line with the never adopted working-requirement, to exempt only those parties that submit proof of adequate patent commercialization.

Attorney Fees after Octane Fitness and Highmark

A court may award attorney fees to a prevailing party in a patent trial under exceptional circumstances. Since 2005, courts had applied a rigid formula to determine whether a case was exceptional. In the summer of 2014, the Supreme Court rejected this rigid test. Instead, the Court held that an exceptional case is “simply one that stands out from others.” Finding a case exceptional, the Court said, was at the discretion of the district court and only reviewable on appeal for an abuse of discretion. A little over a year later, one interesting question is: how do district courts now determine what cases are exceptional in the absence of a more formulaic approach? The analysis of several recent cases reveal that district courts primarily analyze a party’s (1) litigation position and (2) litigation conduct to determine whether — in its discretion — to award attorney fees. To a lesser degree, district courts have also awarded attorney fees to deter infringement and unsavory litigation practices. However, the deterrence rationale has the potential to be problematic: its purpose is to deter litigation practices, but given the current legal climate it could be used to unfairly penalize litigants that might be classified as “patent trolls.” The existing literature on the award of attorney fees in patent cases sheds very little light on the problems district courts’ reliance on the deterrence rationale could present. This essay addresses these problems and offers practical insights as to when courts should rely on the deterrence rationale to award attorney fees. The essay points out that what makes a case exceptional should have little to do with the identity of the parties. In addition, this essay prescribes that district courts should not take into account the business model of the parties to justify deterrence as a rationale for awarding attorney fees.

Working Hard or Making Work? Plaintiffs' Attorneys Fees in Securities Fraud Class Actions

In this paper, we study attorneys’ fees awarded in the largest securities class actions: “mega-settlements.” Consistent with prior work, we find larger fee awards but lower percentages in these cases. We also find that courts are more likely to reject or modify fee requests made in connection with the largest settlements. We conjecture that this scrutiny provides an incentive for law firms to bill more hours, not to advance the case, to help justify large fee awards – “make work.” The results of our empirical tests are consistent with plaintiffs’ attorneys investing more time in litigation against larger companies, particularly when there are multiple lead counsel firms. Using a difference-in-difference analysis, we show that “make work” increased in cases with multiple lead counsel after the Supreme Court validated a “price impact” defense in the Halliburton II case. We find a similar pattern with relative efficiency, with more hours per litigation day. We also find that courts award higher multipliers in cases with pre-litigation observable characteristics that indicate a lower risk of dismissal – and a correspondingly higher probability of settlement – particularly against larger companies. Overall, our results suggest that plaintiffs’ attorneys are receiving windfall fee awards in mega-settlement cases at shareholders’ expense.

How Algo Westlaw and Algo Google Scholar Failed the Rohrmoos Test, and How to Improve Case Law Citation With or Without Artificial Intelligence

How Algo Westlaw and Algo Google Scholar Failed the Rohrmoos Test, and How to Improve Case Law Citation With or Without Artificial Intelligence

Being True to Trulia: Do Disclosure-Only Settlements in Merger Objection Lawsuits Harm Shareholders?

A significant debate within mergers and acquisitions law concerns the explosive popularity of the “merger objection lawsuit” (MOL), a shareholder action seeking to enjoin an announced deal on fiduciary duty grounds. MOLs blossomed during the Financial Crisis, becoming popularly associated with “shareholder shakedowns,” whereby quick-triggered plaintiff attorneys would file against — and then rapidly settle with — acquirers, typically on non-monetary terms containing modest added disclosures in exchange for blanket class releases and attorney fee awards. This practice unleashed a torrent of criticism from lawyers, commentators, academics, and (ultimately) judges, culminating in a doctrinal shift in Delaware law in the January 2016 Trulia opinion, which virtually prohibited disclosure-only settlements. This paper investigates the implications of this doctrinal shock from a shareholder welfare perspective. We argue that — notwithstanding the intuitive appeal of prohibiting / discouraging disclosure settlements — it is far from clear whether doing so helps or hurts target shareholders ex ante, since the threat of MOLs interacts with other intra-corporate agency costs (such as those of managers and buyers negotiating deals). Reducing the credibility of a litigation threat may deter shakedowns at the cost of reduced deal premia and shareholder value — consequences inconsistent with conventional commitments of corporate law. We develop a theoretical model of company acquisitions formally demonstrating that the competing equilibrium effects of Trulia are indeterminate, an insight that hoists a flag of caution regarding the doctrinal innovation. Moreover, our model delivers testable implications related to Trulia, which we investigate empirically. Our empirical analysis suggest that the recent doctrinal shock does not appear to have resulted in a discernible increase to target shareholder welfare.

Sustainable Development through the Right to Access to Justice in Environmental Matters in China

Access to justice is an irreplaceable complementary right. Without enforcement, environmental law would be ‘toothless’ in practice. Recently, China has made some significant progress in protecting the relevant parties’ right to access to justice in environmental matters. However, there are still some problems and challenges in the protection of this right in theory and in practice. To effectively realize this right, it is necessary to analyze the present situations and problems of the right in China from a legal perspective. This is done by introducing and analyzing the laws, regulations, policies, and practice concerning the right to access to justice in environmental matters in China. Specifically, this paper discusses the present situations of this right from several aspects. Based thereon, a brief problems analysis will be made. Some possible suggestions on how to better protect the right in China will be proposed from the perspectives of engaging, effectiveness and efficiency. These suggestions include empowering various parties with more capacity and possibilities; establishing a legal aid system and special fund; improving the exemption system and attorney fee transfer system; establishing a pre-litigation examination mechanism; and stimulating various parties’ potential roles.

Taxing Litigation: Federal Tax Concerns of Personal Injury Plaintiffs and Their Lawyers

This Article addresses the federal tax concerns of personal injury plaintiffs and the lawyers who represent them, typically on a contingency-fee basis. It explains when plaintiffs’ recoveries are taxable for income and employment tax purposes and whether and how those recoveries are required to be reported by defendants to the IRS. It also discusses whether attorney’s fees and costs are deductible by plaintiffs.In addition to these tax planning and compliance issues, the Article also considers when tax evidence might be admissible. Plaintiffs and defendants often try to introduce tax evidence in an effort to increase or decrease, respectively, the amount of damages awarded. These attempts have been met with varying degrees of success, depending on the jurisdiction and context.The Article then addresses the personal tax issues of trial lawyers themselves. Structured attorney fee arrangements, whereby these lawyers attempt to defer tax on contingent fees, are discussed. The tax deductibility of litigation costs advanced by contingent fee lawyers to their clients is considered. Finally, the Article concludes with a discussion of how provisions of the 2017 Tax Act might affect trial lawyers.

129 Million Class Members $0, Charities $6.5 Million, Attorneys $2 Million: Are Cy Pres-Only Settlements Fair, Adequate and Reasonable?

This article discusses the Supreme Court appeal in Frank v. Goas, to be argued before the Court on October 31, 2018. This appeal involves a class action settlement with Google, approved by the Ninth Circuit, where the 129 million class members received no compensation, the class action attorneys received $2.125 million in attorney fees, and Google and the class counsel agreed to contribute $6.5 million to be distributed to seven charitable and non-profit organizations as a cy pres resolution of the litigation. The Court will decide whether such cy pres-only awards in settlement classes comport with the Rule 23(e) requirement that such settlements be “fair, adequate, and reasonable.” Class action attorneys will be closely watching the Court’s attention to the issue of cy pres relief in class action settlements. Cy pres provisions have become increasingly prevalent in settlement agreements, raising heightened judicial concern and academic criticism. Notwithstanding the increasing concern, lower courts continue to approve settlement agreements with cy pres provisions, and class action lawyers continue to expand their use. The Frank appeal embodies both the ideal as well as the imperfect vehicle for the Court to address the issue of cy pres relief. The Frank appeal could hardly have embraced a more extreme exemplar of possible cy pres overreaching: a no-compensation class, cy pres-only settlement, with 25% attorney fee. The Court might adopt one of several approaches to addressing the use of cy pres relief in settlement agreements. Radically, the Court could declare cy pres provisions unconstitutional and not sustainable under Rule 23: issuing a categorical ban urged by objector Frank. This outcome would be possible if the Court’s conservative wing endorsed this result. But at least some conservative Justices will recognize that corporate defendants sometimes desire cy pres provisions – as did Google here – and therefore have little interest in a Court-mandated outright ban. A bright-line prohibition on cy pres awards, however, most certainly would not be joined by the Court’s liberal Justices. More likely, however, given the extreme nature of the Google agreement, the Court will probably choose not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Thus, it is possible that the Court may disapprove the cy pres-only settlement in the Google litigation, but nonetheless preserve the possibility of cy pres in more limited circumstances. The Court may set forth parameters and rules governing the permissible scope of cy pres relief that acknowledge the concerns raised by the objector, but nonetheless recognize situations where cy pres relief makes sense, as urged by the Respondents and various amici. This compromise position could conceivably earn the endorsement of both liberal and conservative Justices. The complicated role that cy pres relief plays in the class settlement arena is reflected in the interesting array of amicus briefs. Normally, one would expect that the usual cohort of corporate, anti-class action groups to weigh in opposition to cy pres relief. However, corporate defendants sued in consumer class litigation do not always oppose cy pres remediation and frequently coordinate with class counsel to craft cy pres settlements that are to the defendants’ advantage. Google’s hybrid brief, urging that the Court uphold the cy pres settlement while urging the Court to address various class action abuses, captures the complex position of defendants regarding this appeal. On the contrary, the usual array of plaintiff-minded organizations have aligned to ask the Court to uphold the Ninth Circuit’s decision, and not outright ban or restrict cy pres relief, stressing the constructive benefits to society of various cy pres settlements, including support of legal aid entities otherwise publicly underfunded.

Attorney fees in repeated relationships

We investigate contracts between a law firm and a corporate client involved in a repeated relationship. In contrast to the previous literature pertaining to one-time interactions between clients and attorneys, we find that the contingent fee is not the best arrangement. Rather, the contingent fee is dominated by a contract which, we argue, an outside observer could not distinguish from simple hourly fee contract. This contract includes an hourly fee equal to the law firm’s opportunity cost, a lump sum, and a retention function. The lump sum payment is independent of the number of hours worked by the law firm and the outcome of the case. The repeated nature of the relationship allows the client to create a contract where the desire to maintain the relationship induces the law firm to exert the optimal level of effort in the current case.

Analyst coverage and lawsuit risk

ABSTRACTIn this study, we use a unique, hand-collected dataset of employee lawsuits and study the impact of analyst coverage on labour relations. We find that an increase in analyst coverage lowers the work-related litigations. In addition, we show that an increased number of analysts lowers the litigation cost, measured by settlement fees and attorney fees. Our results suggest analysts have an important impact on employee relations. Our research enriches the literature on employment practices and analyst coverage.

Fair Division of Attorneys' Fees

As consolidated multidistrict litigation (MDL) has come to dominate the federal civil docket, the problem of how to divide attorney fees among participating firms has become the source of frequent and protracted litigation. For example, in the NFL Concussion Litigation, the judge awarded the plaintiff attorneys over $100 million in fees, but the division of those fees among the 26 firms involved sparked two additional years of litigation. In this Essay, we explore solutions to this fee division problem, drawing insights from the economics, game theory, and industrial organization literatures. Ultimately, we propose a novel division method based on peer reports. Participating firms assess the relative contribution of other firms to the litigation, and then optimization or Bayesian techniques arrive at a consensus or compromise fee allocation. Our methods are intuitively easy to understand, enable broad participation, and are resistant to collusion or other strategic behavior, making them likely to be accepted by the firms involved. Our Essay thus provides courts with an important mediation tool or decision rule for these fee division disputes.

An Overview of the Law of Attorney Fees in the United States: The American Rule is not so Simple After All

It often is said that in the United States each party pays their own attorney’s fees, win or lose, absent a contractual provision to the contrary or some recognized ground in equity. This basic proposition, which is true as far as it goes, is based on the so-called American Rule, which provides that in the United States each side in a litigated case is responsible for paying their own attorney, regardless of the outcome of the case. On its face this proposition seems simple. On the contrary, however, the laws in the United States governing attorney’s fees are surprising quite complex. This article provides a general survey of the patchwork of laws, federal and to a lesser extent state, and the author will demonstrate that rules and laws governing attorney’s fees are often grounded in important public policy and fundamentally shape important issues, such as access to the courts and the legal system more generally. Unfortunately, many United States citizens have been priced out of the legal market under the current system.

Designing the Tax Treatment of Litigation-Related Costs

Defendants often deduct for income tax purposes their litigation-related costs, such as attorney fees and payments to settle claims or satisfy judgments. The result is often a large gap between the sticker price of settlements or judgments and their after-tax cost—what defendants really pay out of pocket. The problem: For every dollar that a defendant avoids in tax liability by, for example, deducting the damage awards it pays, the civil justice system falls that much short of its corrective-justice or optimal-deterrence goals in that case. For this reason, the entire civil justice system should care about this question: How should income tax law treat litigation-related costs? This Article identifies the critical tax-design choices that must be faced but that prior commentary has largely ignored: How to attribute litigation-related costs to an income-producing activity; whether to treat liability insurer payments made on a defendant’s behalf as income to that defendant; whether to coordinate the tax treatment of a payor’s damages payments with the tax treatment of those receipts to the payee; and whether litigation-related costs should be treated as capital expenditures. Then, the Article offers a new default rule for settlement agreements: Unless a settlement agreement expressly indicates otherwise, a settling defendant promises not to seek an allowable tax deduction for litigation-related costs. In so doing, this Article reveals the issues that lawyers, judges, and scholars must no longer ignore when they argue over how an income tax system could or should treat litigation-related costs.

Enforcing the Bargain v. Materiality Requirement: The Future of Disclosure-Only Settlements Post-Trulia

In In re Trulia, Inc. Stockholder Litigation, the Delaware Court of Chancery broke away from its tradition of routinely approving disclosure-only settlements and required disclosures to be material in order to cure the conflict of interest between plaintiff’s counsel and the plaintiff class. I argue that fairness of settlement is the only standard in approving class action settlements and fairness will not be achieved by requiring materiality. Shareholders are legally entitled to all material information, as the board’s fiduciary duty dictates. Thus, material disclosures are enforcement of a legal duty that is no consideration for the release of shareholder claims. On the other hand, fairness could be achieved by enforcing the bargain if the bargaining process was conducted fairly and in good faith. The agency problem and the conflict of interest between the plaintiff’s counsel and the plaintiff class can be resolved by judicial assessment on whether there was adequate representation based on the effort of the plaintiff’s counsel and the appropriate attorney fee award according to the well-established three-scale system in quantifying the appropriate attorney fees. In addition, overbroad releases can be rescinded under the contract doctrines of fraud and unconscionability if such settlements were fraudulently induced or the release is overbroad compared to the benefit that the disclosures conveyed.

Class Actions in the Era of Trump: Trends and Developments in Class Certification and Related Issues

In this memorandum prepared for the Annual ABA National Institute on Class Actions, Professors Coffee and Lahav review and assess developments in class certification over recent years, and track trends in approaches to certification. Special attention is given to securities litigation, the use of confidential witnesses, ascertainability, attorney's fees, standing, mootness, statutes of repose, and the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions, including Halliburton II and Spokeo.

Recovery of Attorney's Fees in the Absence of a Contract in Texas: Amicus Curiae Brief on Behalf of the Public in Hill v. Shamoun (Tex 2018)

In Shamoun & Norman, LLP v. Hill, 483 S.W.3d 767 (Tex. App.-Dallas 2016, pet. granted), the Dallas Court of Appeals held that a law firm could recover attorney’s fees from a former client in the absence of a contract that complied with the statute of frauds based on the common-law theory of quantum meruit as an alternative, and reversed a trial court that had denied such recovery, reinstating a jury verdict for $7,250,000 in fees for the attorney, the equivalent of $48,000 per hour. The Texas Supreme Court granted the former client’s petition for review and held oral arguments on October 10, 2017. Cause No. 16-0107, styled ALBERT G. HILL, JR. v. SHAMOUN & NORMAN, LLP. This amicus curiae brief urges the Texas High Court to consider the implications of the legal questions presented in Hill v. Shamoun for the general public (rather than merely the well-heeled parties before the court), and to address the broader issue of how the reasonableness of attorney’s fees is to be determined in the absence of a contract and in the absence of market-place price setting. This includes court-ordered fees in the fee-shifting context in addition to lawsuits by attorneys against their former clients seeking additional fees that were not incurred under a traditional attorney-client retainer agreement. It is argued that neither the lodestar method used by federal courts, nor the fee factors articulated in Arthur Andersen & Co. v. Perry Equip. Corp., 945 S.W.2d 812 (Tex. 1997), are adequate to address the matter of fee awards in computer-driven mass litigation that requires little attorney time per case.

ВЗАЄМОВІДНОСИНИ АДВОКАТА ТА КЛІЄНТА: УКРАЇНСЬКА ТА ЗАРУБІЖНА ПРАКТИКИ

The scientific article is devoted to the analysis of issues related to the peculiarities of the relationship between a lawyer and a client in Ukraine and foreign countries. In the article, the author analyzes the provisions of the Law of Ukraine "On the Bar and Advocate Activity" and the Rules of Lawyer Ethics concerning such aspects of the relationship between an attorney and a client as confidentiality, preservation of attorney secrecy, payment of an attorney's fee and determination of the legal nature of an attorney's "success fee". The works of domestic and foreign scientists, the subject of which the author identified the questions, have been investigated. The author defines trust as the basis of the relationship between the client and the lawyer, defines its value and normative dimension; the issues of possible abuse of confidence on the part of a lawyer were considered. It has been established that the principle of confidentiality is not absolute and when it is applied, there are exceptions provided for by the Rules of Lawyer Ethics. The author draws attention to the fact that neither the legislator, nor the all-Ukrainian bodies of advocate self-government determine the criteria for the reasonableness of the amount of the fee. The available decisions of the councils of lawyers of individual regions on the approximate amount of the fee are of a recommendatory nature. The obligation of a lawyer was established to provide in the agreement on the provision of legal assistance provisionsregarding the procedure for payment conditions, return of fees; the possibility of agreeing on the payment of the “success fee” with the client was determined. The author has analyzed the practice of consideration of disciplinary complaints by the Higher Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of the Bar on certain issues of preserving attorney secrets and attorney fees. The experience of the United States of America, Great Britain and France in the aspect of normative regulation and law enforcement of the issues identified in scientific work is investigated. The author identified both the general characteristics of the relationship between a lawyer and a client in Ukraine and foreign countries, as well as excellent ones. The general characteristics of the relationship between a lawyer and a client can be traced in matters of the concept of lawyer secrecy and the guarantee of its nondisclosure. Distinctive characteristics - in matters of the type of responsibility for the disclosure of attorney secrets and the availability of mandatory criteria for the reasonableness of the amount of the attorney's fee.