Billable Hours

H

hipichikk

New Member
Jurisdiction
Texas
A bank I have a loan with automatically deducts payment each month from my account and I've never missed a payment, yet they thought I did and filed a lawsuit. I spent a LOT of time reading laws, court rules, legal document format, filing time, etc and I'm in the health field. I told them a while back my hours are billable. Now they're offering a settlement way below the generous hourly rate and told me no law supports me having billable hours. Prove them wrong with law, or case law, please. I'm pro se....obviously.
 
hipichikk said:
I spent a LOT of time reading laws, court rules, legal document format, filing time, etc and I'm in the health field. I told them a while back my hours are billable. Now they're offering a settlement way below the generous hourly rate and told me no law supports me having billable hours. Prove them wrong with law, or case law
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Even if you have a contract that provides for recovery of attorneys' fees by the prevailing party, a non-lawyer who incurred no fees has no such entitlement.


adjusterjack said:
Read about the American Rule regarding attorney fees
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Not really a good point in this situation. The bank sued to enforce a loan agreement. Unless it's the most rinky-dink bank in the history of ever, that loan agreement is in writing and contains a provision for recovery of attorneys' fees by the prevailing party. The issue here is that the OP, a non-lawyer, has not incurred any fees, and there's no authority that a pro se party gets to make up an hourly rate and recover fees that weren't incurred.
 
hipichikk said:
A bank I have a loan with automatically deducts payment each month from my account and I've never missed a payment, yet they thought I did and filed a lawsuit. I spent a LOT of time reading laws, court rules, legal document format, filing time, etc and I'm in the health field. I told them a while back my hours are billable. Now they're offering a settlement way below the generous hourly rate and told me no law supports me having billable hours. Prove them wrong with law, or case law, please. I'm pro se....obviously.
Click to expand...

The time that you spend researching the laws, etc, on your own legal doesn't entitle you to any money under the law. I'm an attorney and if I represent myself in a legal proceeding I don't get any money for my time either. Attorneys fees, when awarded by a court are compensation to a party in a case that PAID an attorney to represent them. It is because that party is out real money that makes it compensable in some kinds of legal claims.

Note one other thing, too. Simply declaring to the other party that your hours are billable means nothing in the law. If you had a contract with the other party that provided you get paid for your time for doing this stuff then you'd have a remedy if the other party did not pay as agreed. You had no agreement with the other side to pay for your time, and therefore you get nothing more than what the other party wishes to voluntarily give you for that.
 
My point is the contract was upheld on my end and they were always getting their payments. I've had to cash in PTO from my job to put in the time of learning law to defend myself for something I didn't do wrong. That's money I could have cashed in or spent on something way better than defending myself in a wrongful lawsuit. Still no?


zddoodah said:
Even if you have a contract that provides for recovery of attorneys' fees by the prevailing party, a non-lawyer who incurred no fees has no such entitlement.




Not really a good point in this situation. The bank sued to enforce a loan agreement. Unless it's the most rinky-dink bank in the history of ever, that loan agreement is in writing and contains a provision for recovery of attorneys' fees by the prevailing party. The issue here is that the OP, a non-lawyer, has not incurred any fees, and there's no authority that a pro se party gets to make up an hourly rate and recover fees that weren't incurred.
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Fair e
Tax Counsel said:
The time that you spend researching the laws, etc, on your own legal doesn't entitle you to any money under the law. I'm an attorney and if I represent myself in a legal proceeding I don't get any money for my time either. Attorneys fees, when awarded by a court are compensation to a party in a case that PAID an attorney to represent them. It is because that party is out real money that makes it compensable in some kinds of legal claims.

Note one other thing, too. Simply declaring to the other party that your hours are billable means nothing in the law. If you had a contract with the other party that provided you get paid for your time for doing this stuff then you'd have a remedy if the other party did not pay as agreed. You had no agreement with the other side to pay for your time, and therefore you get nothing more than what the other party wishes to voluntarily give you for that.
Click to expand...
 
hipichikk said:
My point is the contract was upheld on my end and they were always getting their payments. I've had to cash in PTO from my job to put in the time of learning law to defend myself for something I didn't do wrong. That's money I could have cashed in or spent on something way better than defending myself in a wrongful lawsuit. Still no?
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Nope. You don't get compensated for time spent working on a lawsuit.
 
Thank you for breaking it down better than calling me delusional. I value my time and did not bring this upon myself. My hours will at least go towards teaching the bank a small lesson, even if it wasn't as many thousands as I would have liked. Its still thousands and I'm not even an attorney. Good enough I guess.
 

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