Sierra Madre Ranked 17th in Legal Fees Among L.A. County Cities

Sierra Madre ranked 17 among 88 cities in Los Angeles County for the amount of money spent per capita on attorney fees, according to a study by the Los Angeles Times.

The ranking was contained in a database resulting from a one-year project by the Times as it investigated the effect of legal costs on city budgets.

The Times found that Sierra Madre spent $454,078, or 3.3 percent of the city’s budget, on attorney fees.

That's $36 per resident. La Habra Heights and Burbank spent around the same amount per resident: $33 and $39, respectively.

Overall, at­tor­neys' fees con­sume less than 1 percent of the 2010 budgets in nearly half the county’s cit­ies, an av­er­age of about $25 per res­id­ent. But a hand­ful of cit­ies spend three to four times that much, the Times found.

La Cañada Flintidge was No. 30, spending $24 per capita. Glendale spent $17 per capita, while San Marino spent $10, according to The Times database.

Check out the Times’ full database here.