Attorney And Legal Fee Expert

O’Connor Expert Witness CV

Attorney John O’Connor provides attorney fee expert witness and consultancy services, as well as attorney fee litigation services, representing both law firms and clients in attorney fee litigation and alternative dispute resolution throughout the country. His work in this regard has been widely lauded by clients, lawyers, courts, and arbitrators.

Attorney fee disputes can involve many contexts and often arise in insurance litigation settings, as well as large business cases. Regardless of the context, Mr. O’Connor can work to certify and defend a client’s billing to ensure they receive their just compensation, or attack billings to fight for a reduction in attorney fees. Mr. O’Connor’s expertise covers a broad range of attorney fee issues, including:

Lodestar analysis, including reasonable hourly rate, reasonable hour, and multiplier or fee enhancement analysis;
State and federal fee-shifting statutes;
Contractual attorney fee clauses;
Availability of CCP §1021.5 Private Attorney General attorney fees, including “catalyst” theory analysis;
Litigation efficiency, including task assignment, staffing, duplication of work;
Litigation success and prevailing party analysis;
Class Action attorney fee;
Attorney fee award appeals;
Anti-SLAPP motion prevailing party attorney fee awards;
Appellate attorney fees;
Contingency fee agreements;
Quantum Meruit analysis for judgment subject to multiple contingent fee agreements (e.g., due to substitution of attorney)
Brandt fees
Buss fees
Insurance Carrier Billing Guideline analysis
Coverage Counsel invoice review
Block billing and description of service analysis
CCP §998 Settlement Offer analysis

John O’Connor has more than 40 years of experience dealing with complex attorney fee disputes. He is a member of the National Association of Legal Fee Analysis (NALFA) and has been recognized as “Nation’s top Attorney Fee Expert” by NAFLA every year since 2017. He travels throughout the country representing clients as an expert witness.

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Attorney Fee Expert

Attorney’s Fee Expert Team

John D. O’connor

Fee Expert Profile:

Since 1977, Mr. O’Connor has been evaluating and litigating fee petitions in state and federal courts. As written billing guidelines became in vogue for institutional clients in the mid-eighties, he participated heavily in working with our institutional clients in government and insurance, and other large businesses to establish and implement practical billing standards. Mr. O’Connor regularly consulted with these clients about their perception of the positive and negative in our billings, and where appropriate, remedied the same.

Due to Mr. O’Connor’s growing expertise in the legal fee and auditing issues, during the years 1991 through 2001, he consulted with numerous law firms throughout the country who were seeking my advice on audit criticisms leveled against their practices, almost invariably involved in large fee disputes. He also consulted on numerous occasions with fee payors in fee disputes and continued this work as a subspecialty of his litigation practice through the present time.

In total, Mr. O’Connor has testified as an expert or handled litigations in approximately twenty states. He regularly reviews published rate surveys, generally broken down by location, fields of practice, size of firm, and status of lawyer. he has also been for the past several years consulting and lecturing nationwide through the auspices of the National Association of Legal Fee Analysis (“NALFA”). In addition to lecturing himself, Mr. O’Connor has attended numerous lectures of legal fee analysts, expert witnesses, and general counsel on fee matters. He has had the honor of being named by NALFA the “nation’s top attorney fee expert” since 2017.

Benjamin J. Pekarek

Fee Expert Profile:

Mr. Pekarek earned his BA in Business Administration at the University of San Diego, and concurrently earned his Master of Business Administration with a concentration in corporate finance and his Juris Doctorate from the University of San Diego. With a solid foundation in accounting and finance and his experience as an attorney, Mr. Pekarek reviews invoices, cutting through cryptic and ambiguous descriptions of services and synthesizing a case’s billings into easily digestible demonstratives that lay the foundation for Mr. O’Connor’s analysis as to the reasonableness, or unreasonableness, of the hours billed on a given task and on the case as a whole. As an associate with O’Connor and Associates, Mr. Pekarek has specialized in reviewing invoices for compliance with billing guidelines from insurance carriers and other clients.