How much time has been spent by the opposing counsel in a personal injury action?

Third, in less complex cases there may be a tendency to assume -as the district court may have assumed here -that the time spent by an opposing counsel experienced in the subject matter is a good measure of the time reasonably expended. But in small cases as well as large ones, opposing parties do not always have the same responsibilities under the applicable rules, nor are they necessarily similarly situated with respect to their access to necessary facts, the need to do original legal research to make out their case, and so on. Comparison of the hours spent in particular tasks by the attorney for the party seeking fees and by the attorney for the opposing party, therefore, does not necessarily indicate whether the hours expended by the party seeking fees were excessive. See Johnson v. Univ. College of the Univ. of Ala. in Birmingham, 706 F.2d 1205, 1208 (11th Cir. 1983). Rather, any such comparison must carefully control for factors such as those mentioned, as well as for the possibility that the prevailing party's attorney -who, after all, did prevail -spent more time because she did better work.