Calculation basisOriginal base × inflation × locality
20th year+ · selected periodCalculated USD / hour
Federal geographic factor
Attorney rate range
Annual hourly-rate matrix
June 2016–May 2027 · Original experience bands · USD per hour
Click a year to inspect it
Rate period
1st–3rd
4th–7th
8th–10th
11th–19th
20th+
Paralegal / clerk
These are reproducible calculations, not verbatim LaffeyMatrix.com rows or government-approved local billing rates. Calendar-year locality inputs apply to the rate period beginning that June.
A decade of calculated rates
Same formula and rounding policy across every year
Annual calculations, not observations of local law-firm billing. Exact values appear in the matrix above.
Trace the selected rate
Official BLS indicesOfficial OPM percentagesFinal rounding only
About the starting point: the original 1988–89 Laffey base rates were calibrated in D.C. This model uses those original amounts—not today’s D.C. table—and applies national inflation plus official annual locality ratios. Federal locality pay measures labor-pay differences, not consumer cost of living. No interest or discretionary geographic uplift is added.
Choose a rate guide. Build a fee worksheet.
Choose Laffey, a licensed Real Rate Report figure, another guide, or a case-specific court rate. Manual figures require a period and source citation. No Laffey inflation or locality adjustment is applied to alternative rates. Entries stay in this browser.
San Diego
Rate guide
Period
Experience / role
Hours
Rate / hour
Subtotal
Calculated lodestar · USD$0.00
0 hours
Sum of hours × rounded hourly rates. No interest, expenses, multiplier, or court reductions included.
Keep different guides distinct
For Laffey only, “2026” means June 1, 2026 through May 31, 2027. Work before June 1 belongs to the preceding rate year. Split a row if the rate year or experience band changes.
Select the band applicable when the work was performed. The first band includes an attorney’s first year after graduation; “20th year+” begins with the 20th practice year. This tool does not decide whether a court should use current or historical rates.
Real Rate Report and other guides retain their own time periods, market, role, and percentile. Enter those details with your citation. The court option reproduces one named attorney’s approved rates; it is not a general market schedule.
A guided chat assembles your answers into an editable declaration draft. It is a browser-only drafting aid, not a live AI chat. It does not verify facts, invent expertise, or decide whether rates are reasonable.
Tell us about the declaration
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Skip an answer to leave a bracketed placeholder. Answers are held in memory only and disappear when the page is closed or reloaded.
Include your fee worksheet
This copies the current worksheet into the draft as proposed amounts, not as proof of reasonableness.
Filed examples
Actual filed examples from Stiner v. Brookdale, N.D. Cal., August 7, 2025. These Bay Area examples illustrate drafting structure; they are not local rate findings for other cities.
Examples illustrate structure and support. Do not copy another declarant’s experience or testimony as your own.
Working draft · no signature
Brackets mark required facts or opinions that have not been supplied. The knowledgeable declarant must review the complete draft and choose the appropriate attestation before signing.
Regenerating replaces edits in this box. No signature, execution date, or statement under penalty of perjury is supplied automatically.
The calculation, from its original inputs
Displayed values are rounded to two decimals. Calculations and downloadable source inputs retain full precision.
Original 1988–89 base rates
20th+: $265; 11th–19th: $220; 8th–10th: $195; 4th–7th: $135; 1st–3rd: $110; paralegal/clerk: $60. The publisher identifies these as the 1989 update to D.C. Laffey rates.
June 1988 legal-services CPI is 107.10. For 2016–2021, divide the selected June CPI by 107.10. This equals compounding the publisher’s annual June-to-June factors without intermediate rounding.
For 2022 and 2023 use the average of May and July CPI, because June was absent. From 2024, multiply the 2023 CPI factor by June current-year Offices of Lawyers PPI divided by June 2023 PPI (270.42).
Use published locality percentages, not capped GS salaries. Preserve all precision until the final hourly rate; round positive half-dollar ties upward. Each rate period uses the calendar-year locality table for its June starting year.
Exact inputs for the selected year
Why reconstructed and published rates differ Current BLS values plus full-precision calculations do not exactly reproduce every dollar in the publisher’s PDF. The publisher’s original workbook and historical data vintages were not available. Rounding or vintage differences are possible, but not proven, explanations. This site identifies its outputs as a current-input reconstruction.
2026 reconciliation before locality
This comparison is a check, not the input to city rates.
Band
Rebuilt
Published
What is official, and what is calculated?
The BLS inflation series and OPM locality percentages are official published inputs. The combined attorney rates are our application of those inputs. The Laffey publisher does not publish these seven city matrices, and OPM does not approve attorney fee awards. Locality pay is a labor-pay measure, not a cost-of-living index.
The geographic ratio is separate from the publisher’s inflation method. In re HPL Technologies, 366 F. Supp. 2d 912, 921–22 & n.1 (N.D. Cal. 2005), illustrates a locality-ratio adjustment using the older USAO table. That does not establish court acceptance of this reconstruction, today’s LSI rates, or any particular local rate. No interest calculation is part of this model.
San Diego case law and rate evidence
Southern District of California · Ninth Circuit · California appellate context. Selecting a metropolitan area changes this library. Coverage includes Laffey, other guides, comparable awards, and declaration evidence. Favorable rate decisions appear alongside relevant limitations. Local decisions and broader appellate authority are identified separately; approval of a particular rate does not establish a general fee schedule.
Local decisions and rate evidence
Favorable high-rate approval with limits · S.D. Cal. · 2025-08-07
Dunsmore v. State of California
No. 3:20-cv-00406-AJB-DDL, ECF 959 (S.D. Cal., signed Aug. 7, 2025; docketed Aug. 8, 2025) · pp. 9–16, especially pp. 13–15
In ADA jail litigation, accepted $900/hour for Aaron Fischer based on specialized disability/prison expertise and local comparable awards. Approved Rosen at $1,251.25 after a 23% reduction to RBGG rates. Used local case evidence, Real Rate Report data and judicial market knowledge; specialized expertise and the favorable settlement supported rates above the opposing expert’s proposed ceiling.
Scope: Reduced DLA Piper rates 40%; declined automatic importation of San Francisco rates because local-counsel unavailability was not adequately shown. No Laffey or OPM formula adopted.
These authorities have a broader geographic reach; they are not local rate schedules.
Ninth Circuit framework · June 9, 2010
Prison Legal News v. Schwarzenegger
608 F.3d 446, 454 · PDF p. 13
The Ninth Circuit upheld a court’s decision not to use Laffey with a proposed 9% San Francisco adjustment. Acceptance in D.C. does not by itself establish reliability in another market.
Scope: permits rejection; it does not categorically forbid using Laffey as evidence. The 2026 Toledo order cites this limitation.
The fee determination was supported by an adjusted Laffey matrix together with attorney testimony about Bay Area rates and the trial court’s own assessment.
Scope: supports consideration of the matrix with other evidence, rather than mandatory adoption of a table.
Current rates for older work & compensation for delay
Courts may compensate for delayed payment using current reasonable rates or historical fees adjusted to present value. This is separate from choosing an appropriate rate guide. Today’s Laffey figure still needs support in the relevant market and type of case.
U.S. Supreme Court · Section 1988
Missouri v. Jenkins
491 U.S. 274, 282–84 (1989). Recognizes current rates or an appropriate adjustment to historical fees as ways to compensate for delay.
559 U.S. 542, 554–56 (2010). Ordinary delay can be reflected through current rates or present-value adjustments. A further enhancement for exceptional delay needs specific proof and an objective calculation; avoid counting the same delay twice.
812 F.3d 734, 740 (9th Cir. 2016). In common-fund cases, counsel must be compensated for delay. The court may apply current rates to earlier work or historical rates with a prime-rate enhancement, and must explain its approach. This is Ninth Circuit common-fund authority, not a nationwide interest mandate.
478 U.S. 310, 314–23 (1986). The federal no-interest rule generally bars delay compensation without an applicable statutory waiver. Calling the amount an inflation or delay adjustment does not avoid that rule. Congress later expressly allowed delay interest in federal employment cases under Title VII; examine the actual fee statute.
The calculator currently reports the selected hourly rates × hours. It does not add delay compensation, interest, or a multiplier. Postjudgment interest is a separate question governed by the judgment and applicable law.
Build a rate request from the evidence. Compare the work, practice area, counsel’s experience, market, and rate year. Favorable cases may support a request with comparable facts; a survey, award, or declaration does not automatically establish the appropriate rate in another matter.
Research summaries, not a comprehensive survey or citator report. Read the full opinions and verify current treatment before relying on them in a filing.
Laffey by case type
Illustrative decisions, not a survey of acceptance rates. This national reference chart stays the same across city pages; the Case Law tab contains the selected locality’s library. LSI, older USAO tables, and Lodestar Rates’s reconstruction are distinct.
Accepted requested 2011–12 rates for earlier work with local and specialization evidence. Interim fee total was separately reduced for partial success.
A Sacramento-reduced matrix was not accepted as the starting point; the court examined local awards and individual qualifications.
A favorable treatment is tied to the fee statute, forum, evidence, work and stage of the particular case. Rejection of a matrix does not mean no fees were awarded. No decision shown adopts all 15 Lodestar Rates matrices.
Current rates, delayed payment & multipliers
Three separate questions: which hourly rate is reasonable, whether delay should be compensated, and whether a further enhancement is permitted. Choosing Laffey does not answer the other two.
Current rates for older work & compensation for delay
Courts may compensate for delayed payment using current reasonable rates or historical fees adjusted to present value. This is separate from choosing an appropriate rate guide. Today’s Laffey figure still needs support in the relevant market and type of case.
U.S. Supreme Court · Section 1988
Missouri v. Jenkins
491 U.S. 274, 282–84 (1989). Recognizes current rates or an appropriate adjustment to historical fees as ways to compensate for delay.
559 U.S. 542, 554–56 (2010). Ordinary delay can be reflected through current rates or present-value adjustments. A further enhancement for exceptional delay needs specific proof and an objective calculation; avoid counting the same delay twice.
812 F.3d 734, 740 (9th Cir. 2016). In common-fund cases, counsel must be compensated for delay. The court may apply current rates to earlier work or historical rates with a prime-rate enhancement, and must explain its approach. This is Ninth Circuit common-fund authority, not a nationwide interest mandate.
478 U.S. 310, 314–23 (1986). The federal no-interest rule generally bars delay compensation without an applicable statutory waiver. Calling the amount an inflation or delay adjustment does not avoid that rule. Congress later expressly allowed delay interest in federal employment cases under Title VII; examine the actual fee statute.
The calculator currently reports the selected hourly rates × hours. It does not add delay compensation, interest, or a multiplier. Postjudgment interest is a separate question governed by the judgment and applicable law.
Decisions actually using current Laffey-related rates for earlier work
N.D. California · 2011-12-01
San Francisco Baykeeper v. West Bay Sanitary District
Matrix: 2011–2012 Laffey-informed rates, with local adjustment and other market evidence; opinion does not identify the matrix as LSI
The court declined to require historical rates for nearly two years of earlier work, recognizing compensation for delay. It accepted the requested rates with support from environmental-law specialization and local comparisons.
The matrix was only part of the proof, some requested rates were below matrix calculations, and a footnote notes some rates had not changed since 2009. The interim fee total was reduced 50% for partial success. This is not adoption of Lodestar Rates’s formula.
D.D.C. · outside the seven metro libraries · 2025-04-07
Sanchez Sanchez v. Ultimo, LLC
No. 19-cv-3188-MJS · ECF 67 · pp. 5–8, especially p. 7 & n.4
Matrix: LSI Laffey
The court expressly rejected historical Laffey rates and applied current LSI Laffey rates because the governing D.C. wage statute requires rates in effect when the fee determination is made. It approved updated rates after the original fee motion.
Statute-specific D.C. authority, not a nationwide FLSA rule or authority mandating Laffey in another city. The years of unpaid wages are not the dates of attorney work. The opinion’s displayed senior-rate figure should not be imported as a verified matrix dataset.
D.D.C. · outside the seven metro libraries · 2016-07-15
Craig v. District of Columbia
No. 11-cv-1200 (RC) · ECF 168 · pp. 8–10, especially p. 10 n.6
Matrix: USAO matrix (not the LSI matrix)
The court applied the current $568 USAO/Laffey rate to counsel’s work stretching back to 2011, citing compensation for delayed payment and noting that the District did not contest the current-versus-historical issue. Local attorney affidavits also supported the rate.
A discretionary, unopposed timing determination using the USAO variant. It does not establish entitlement to LSI rates, automatic current-rate treatment, or current experience bands in other cases; other fee reductions were made.
An appropriate contingency or other enhancement can be available under the governing statute. It is discretionary; do not reuse factors already reflected in rates or hours.
Contingency risk alone generally does not justify a multiplier under the typical federal fee statutes. A rare enhancement under § 1988 requires specific proof of a factor the lodestar fails to capture.
A multiplier may be an enhancement or simply the ratio used to cross-check a percentage fee. Identify which is being used. Ninth Circuit common-fund risk and delay rules differ from the federal statutory contingency rule.
Examples where both Laffey and a multiplier were addressed
Common-fund wage-and-hour class settlement; preliminary approval
Martin v. FedEx Ground Package System, Inc.
No. C 06-6883 VRW, ECF 72, 2008 WL 5478576 (N.D. Cal. Dec. 31, 2008) · pp. 12–16; especially p. 16
Matrix: 2007–2008 USAO Laffey, adjusted by OPM localities for San Francisco, Chico and Santa Ana. Actually used for lodestar cross-check.
The court computed a $1,807,306 lodestar and found the proposed $2,681,250 fee reasonable at preliminary settlement approval: implied multiplier 1.48. Strong recovery and litigation risk informed the assessment.
This is preliminary approval, not a final fee award. The multiplier is the ratio of proposed fee to calculated lodestar, not a blanket entitlement to enhance every Laffey figure. USAO rates differ from the publisher LSI reconstruction on this website.
No. 2:24-cv-01035-ODW (MARx), ECF 80 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 11, 2025) · p. 6 n.4 (Laffey); pp. 9–10 (multiplier)
Matrix: Unspecified Laffey offered by counsel. Expressly declined.
Court declined requested enhancement: issues were not novel or complex, two motions went unopposed, a later motion substantially repeated prior work, and the record did not show precluded employment.
Neither matrix nor multiplier adopted. Demonstrates that the governing fee statute, evidence and already-compensated factors must be examined separately.
No automatic multiplier. State the governing authority, identify factors not already included in the hourly rate or delay adjustment, explain whether the multiplier covers merits work or fee-application work, and support the requested amount. This website does not add a multiplier or interest automatically.
San Diego brief samples
Editable argument modules. Brackets identify facts, evidence, and legal choices counsel must supply. These samples do not assume a declaration exists or that this matrix has been accepted by a court.
Match the sample to the claim. Identify the governing fee statute and court. Federal statutory, state-law, EAJA and common-fund standards differ. Verify citations and current treatment, and retain material contrary authority.
Edits stay in this page and disappear on reload or when switching cities.
Practice focus · San Diego
Wage & hour fees
Start with the claim and the source of payment. Then support the hours, rates, and result.
Federal statutory fees
Fees can exceed the worker’s recovery
The FLSA provides reasonable attorney’s fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff. A fee request needs documented hours and reasonable market rates. The site’s calculated matrix is supporting material, not a judicial finding of local rates.
Laffitte v. Robert Half International, Inc., 1 Cal.5th 480 (2016)
In a wage-and-hour class settlement, the court affirmed a one-third fee from a $19 million fund, with a lodestar cross-check of about 2.03–2.13. The percentage and cross-check were discretionary; this is not approval of a Laffey schedule or an FLSA risk enhancement.
Separate statutory enhancement from a fund cross-check
Federal statutory contingency-risk enhancements are barred under Dague. Perdue permits enhancement only in rare, exceptional circumstances supported by specific evidence. Neither makes a multiplier automatic when Laffey rates are used.
Identify the fee statute, compensable tasks, staffing, experience, market evidence, and degree of success. For delay, distinguish current rates from an additional interest adjustment. Do not compensate the same factor twice.
Settlement analysis · San Diego
Percentage of recovery
Compare a proposed fund-paid fee with the unadjusted lodestar. No percentage is recommended or preselected.
Define the fund
Exclusions may include costs, administration, or other payments. Identify them in the motion; the proper denominator depends on the governing law and settlement terms.
Proposed fee · not an award—
Complete the amounts to see the fee, remaining fund, and implied multiplier.
California state courts
Laffitte v. Robert Half International, Inc., 1 Cal.5th 480 (2016)
In a wage-and-hour class settlement, the court affirmed a one-third fee from a $19 million fund, with a lodestar cross-check of about 2.03–2.13. The percentage and cross-check were discretionary; this is not approval of a Laffey schedule or an FLSA risk enhancement.
Vizcaino v. Microsoft Corp., 290 F.3d 1043 (9th Cir. 2002)
Affirmed a 28% common-fund fee and a 3.65 lodestar cross-check in employee-benefits litigation. The 25% benchmark is a starting point, not a ceiling. This was not an FLSA fee award or a Laffey-rate ruling.
Rejected a proportionality limit on fees in an individual FLSA settlement. A small worker recovery does not itself justify a one-third fee cap. Reasonableness remains necessary; this does not establish a common-fund percentage entitlement.
These authorities address different fee regimes and jurisdictions. An implied multiplier is fee ÷ lodestar, not an additional amount to add to the percentage fee. Separately paid employer fees may require a different analysis from a fee deducted from the class fund.
Open the inputs. Reproduce the result.
Every calculation uses saved source data. Snapshot checked October 30, 2026; updates are not automatic.
01 / Original method
Laffey base rates & index rules
The publisher’s PDF establishes the original base and the CPI-to-PPI transition. The original website provides historical context.