Attorneys appointed to represent indigent defendants are paid for their time and reimbursed for their case expenses. Among the most common case expenses are fees for doing online legal research using Westlaw or Lexis. But, to get reimbursed for that expense, lawyers are required by the Third Circuit (here, p. 9) to prepare a separate document with a “brief statement indicating the issue or issues that were the subject matter of the research” and an “estimate of the number of hours of attorney time that would have been needed to perform manual research.”

Manual research?

I have no idea how many hours it would take to do manual research, because every appellate lawyer on earth stopped relying on “manual research” over a decade ago. Court: I love you, but requiring lawyers to hop through this hoop for every bill they submit is silly. Would any judge hire a clerk who refused to use Westlaw or Lexis? It’s 2014 — the only lawyers who ought to be explaining are the ones who did a federal appeal without online research.

Why not also make us justify taking the train to court, when we could have come by horse and buggy?