Average Fees for Family Law
What are the average legal fees in your jurisdiction for a standard dissolution/custody case? Assume nuclear family, one marital home, 401K division, moderate income difference between parties, etc...
Obviously this will vary based on local rates, but looking at some recent fee petitions I am shocked by the total amount some of these firms are billing. Maybe I just work a lot faster and bill less time for motion practice and discovery review but cases that I get done for $5,000-$15,000 others seem to be billing $50k+ on.
It seems to be a combination of double billing staff and associate time on the same task while also spending excessive amounts of time on research for (what I consider) common issues, document review, or implausible amounts of time drafting documents such 3 hours for a discovery request that appears to be boilerplate where it takes me about 20 minutes to generate a request from a template and adjust it.
Is everyone padding their time or am I missing time somewhere? If I am significantly more efficient does that justify a rate increase? My worry regarding that is that I have to justify my rate in fee petitions if they are higher than more "experienced" counsel.
EDIT: Thanks for everyone's input. It really does just come down to "it depends".