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Under certain circumstances, it may be both efficient and
economical for an attorney to allocate legal research and other
legal work that benefit several clients with the same or similar
issues equitably among those clients as long as the clients
agree, the fees and costs are reasonable, and the attorney
appropriately allocates the common legal work. See, e.g.,
Minahan v. Commissioner, 88 T.C. 492 (1987), in which we
allocated common costs among several taxpayers who were
represented by the same attorneys under an agreement that
provided for the sharing of costs. Morever, legal work that
benefits multiple clients is no less relevant to a court
proceeding than work performed solely for one client. If the
work is performed for multiple clients and enables an attorney to
properly represent a particular client in the court proceeding
described in section 7430, it would seem to satisfy the section
7430(a) requirement that the costs for such work be “incurred in
connection with” the proceeding.
Petitioner’s counsel produced billing records for accounts
of two Hoyt investor client groups seeking relief from joint and
several liability to substantiate petitioner’s share of the group
fees. The billing records for both groups identify the attorneys
who performed work on the section 6015 cases and set forth the
time expended by each attorney, the attorneys’ hourly rates, and
the nature of the work performed. Petitioner’s counsel contend
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