A Stenonymous source came through with an invoice.
$1200/136 = over $8 a page, simplified. Obviously the truth on this Huseby invoice is that a huge chunk of the total is in “webconferencing.”
As more people leak rates information to me, I can do my part to facilitate market transparency. So if you’re sitting on something, feel free to send it to me at chris@stenonymous.com.
If there are any small business owners reading, please consider commenting about what you charge for webconferencing. I would be open to more of an education in this upcharge. Not knowing whether physical office space was provided and how many hours it was booked, I can’t really say what’s fair here.
Addendum:
I see now it says 5 units of webconferencing at $100, so I’ll assume that’s physical space being used for conferencing.
Before I start, I should be honest, the truth is a bit more technical than the headline. So here’s the truth: A May 18, 2023 complaint was filed in South Carolina, Stephenson & Murphy LLC, versus Huseby, LLC d/b/a Huseby Global Litigation.
I’m going to post the complaint. I reached out to Stephenson & Murphy LLC, but didn’t receive any communication back.
“…Effectively, firms like Huseby violate South Carolina law by reallocating costs without consent or court order. This case also involves the practice of national court reporting firms charging excessive fees and costs to parties that did not hire them and never agreed to pay such amounts.” – Stephenson & Murphy LLC v Huseby LLC
Originally I was going to post some commentary, but I’ll let this speak for itself. I have not looked for an update on this filing since I was first sent the complaint in May 2023, so take it for what it is.
A source has provided a letter purportedly from Bobby Thompson from the Thompson Law Offices. Just like the other Huseby post, I’ll let everybody see the letter and then dive in with my commentary.
Letter to Huseby by Bobby Thompson, Esq.Letter to Huseby by Bobby Thompson, Esq.
First thing’s first, it’s surprising to me that there’s $200 in fees and none of them say “appearance fee.”
Then there’s the part about the $4.20 copy fee after original counsel paid almost $6.00. New York City reporters would probably explode if their copy rate was anything close to $4.00. When I was a young reporter, Diamond told some reporters it didn’t pay copies, and copies were about $0.25 a page here. Since I started publishing up a storm about the unfair treatment of reporters, people have seen raises as high as $1.00 a copy. These guys are looking to pull in 4x that. And I bet they all tell lawyers we’re the reason everything is so expensive.
As for not paying anything but the testimony, that’s debatable. I would demand full payment for a caption page and exhibits index, but it’s understandable why someone might not want to pay full-price pages for a word index, which can be provided at the click of a button (kind of like that thing we disparage digitals for.)
But the heart of what I’m getting at is this: Look at that initial $1,000 charge. The attorney re-evaluates the charges and thinks a more reasonable number would be in the ballpark of $700 cheaper. Some of this we could conceivably wave away by saying “attorneys want everything for free,” but I think we need to come to terms with the idea that the billing game has changed. It appears that attorneys are being billed far more than we’re charging, and we’re not in a great position to tell them “it’s not us, really.” There’s case law on this, so that tells me it’s a lot more widespread than we acknowledge in our circles.
Reached out to Mr. Thompson by email and never heard back.
