After winning at trial, Gaw Poe asked for more than $7.6 million in attorney\u2019s fees. But U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald slashed that request down to about $3.1 million. Why? Because the firm had previously been awarded lower rates in a different case, and because the judge worried he would create \u201ca new benchmark\u201d for future fee petitions.<\/p>\n
Ah yes, the classic judicial fear: What if people start expecting excellent lawyers to be paid like excellent lawyers?<\/p>\n
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit was unimpressed. Writing for the court, Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. made clear that courts should not treat firm size as a proxy for skill, experience, or reputation.<\/p>\n
Mendoza went further, emphasizing that first-rate lawyers who win are entitled to first-rate fees, full stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst-rate attorneys who prevail in litigation are entitled to receive fees commensurate with their skill, experience, and reputation, even if their clients are mom-and-pop businesses that don\u2019t have Fortune 500 budgets to hire big law firms,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Founder Randolph Gaw summed it up more bluntly to Reuters<\/a>. \u201cWhat matters most is the results we achieved \u2014 not the size of their law practice.\u201d<\/p>\n And honestly? That\u2019s the whole thing right there.<\/p>\n Gaw also noted the particularly rich irony that tends to surface after<\/em> boutique firms beat Biglaw at trial, \u201cWhen we win, our Big Law opponents often suggest that our fees should be lower than what they were paid to lose the case to us.\u201d<\/p>\n So no, courts don\u2019t need to worry about creating a \u201cnew benchmark\u201d where excellent lawyers are compensated appropriately, regardless of how many names are on the door.<\/p>\n And just like in other areas of life, obsessing over size often misses the point entirely.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The post It\u2019s Not The Size Of The Firm, It\u2019s How You Use It: Ninth Circuit Smacks Down Fee-Shaming Of Small Law<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Ninth Circuit just made clear, size isn\u2019t everything. And pretending otherwise is just compensating for something else entirely.<\/p>\n In a recent decision<\/a>, the Ninth Circuit ruled \u2014 unanimously \u2014 that attorney\u2019s fees awarded to successful plaintiffs cannot be discounted simply because the winning law firm is small. The case involved four-lawyer boutique Gaw Poe, which secured a 2024 jury verdict finding that Prestige Consumer Healthcare illegally gave Costco better pricing on eyedrops than it offered to wholesalers. (You know, just a casual little antitrust violation over your irritated eyeballs.)<\/p>\n After winning at trial, Gaw Poe asked for more than $7.6 million in attorney\u2019s fees. But U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald slashed that request down to about $3.1 million. Why? Because the firm had previously been awarded lower rates in a different case, and because the judge worried he would create \u201ca new benchmark\u201d for future fee petitions.<\/p>\n Ah yes, the classic judicial fear: What if people start expecting excellent lawyers to be paid like excellent lawyers?<\/p>\n On appeal, the Ninth Circuit was unimpressed. Writing for the court, Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. made clear that courts should not treat firm size as a proxy for skill, experience, or reputation.<\/p>\n Mendoza went further, emphasizing that first-rate lawyers who win are entitled to first-rate fees, full stop.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst-rate attorneys who prevail in litigation are entitled to receive fees commensurate with their skill, experience, and reputation, even if their clients are mom-and-pop businesses that don\u2019t have Fortune 500 budgets to hire big law firms,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Founder Randolph Gaw summed it up more bluntly to Reuters<\/a>. \u201cWhat matters most is the results we achieved \u2014 not the size of their law practice.\u201d<\/p>\n And honestly? That\u2019s the whole thing right there.<\/p>\n Gaw also noted the particularly rich irony that tends to surface after<\/em> boutique firms beat Biglaw at trial, \u201cWhen we win, our Big Law opponents often suggest that our fees should be lower than what they were paid to lose the case to us.\u201d<\/p>\n So no, courts don\u2019t need to worry about creating a \u201cnew benchmark\u201d where excellent lawyers are compensated appropriately, regardless of how many names are on the door.<\/p>\n And just like in other areas of life, obsessing over size often misses the point entirely.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Ninth Circuit just made clear, size isn\u2019t everything. And pretending otherwise is just compensating for something else entirely. In a recent decision, the Ninth Circuit ruled \u2014 unanimously \u2014 that attorney\u2019s fees awarded to successful plaintiffs cannot be discounted simply because the winning law firm is small. The case involved four-lawyer boutique Gaw Poe, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-SczYI3.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/06\/size-big-small-large-largest-300x242.png?resize=300%2C242&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n\n
\nKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her<\/a> with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Mastodon @[email\u00a0protected].<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"