Legal writing and English grammar often stir a passionate debate among lawyers, and it becomes more engaging when judges partake in the discussion. One such deliberation that gets significant attention is on the terminology of legal fees — is it attorney’s fees, attorneys’ fees, attorneys fees, or simply attorney fees?
Intriguingly, this question intrigued Magistrate Judge Andrew Edison of the Southern District of Texas who explored the issue in a
memorandum filed recently. Addressing what he called ‘one of the burning legal questions of our generation’, Edison included a 755-word footnote where he grappled with this linguistic challenge.
Judge Edison undertook a comprehensive assessment of this issue, consulting circuit courts, federal rules, and federal statutes, only to discover that there was no standardization regarding this terminology. Hoping to uncover a decisive answer, he tried his luck with the Supreme Court style guide, but found nothing conclusive.
After a laborious exploration, Edison reached a rather unsatisfactory conclusion that there’s no one right way to describe the fees awarded for work done by a lawyer. However, he did chart his own future approach – he will use “attorney’s fees” to refer to fees sought by one lawyer and “attorneys’ fees” to refer to fees sought by multiple lawyers and will discard “attorney fees” and “attorneys fees” completely.
Judge Andrew Edison’s journey into the depths of legal linguistics to settle this linguistic query offers an insightful exploration of this aspect of legal terminology, leaving legal practitioners with a question to ponder on – which variant will they choose to use in their practice?