A leading London law firm has been criticised for charging nine years' worth of man hours for work on a five-day trial.

Lawyers from Allen & Overy ran up more than £5 million in costs representing BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, according to The Financial Times.

High Court Judge Mr Justice Floyd said the cost of the firm's work was "totally unfamiliar" to anyone involved in efficient litigation.

The City law firm stressed it had been told to leave "no stone unturned" in fighting the case against US-based wireless technology company Visto.

The revelation suggests that the credit crunch hitting banks and homeowners has yet to have much impact on the legal world.

Redundancy lawyers may even see a boost in business as thousands of City workers are fired. In his judgment in the BlackBerry dispute yesterday, Mr Justice Floyd said he would expect Allen & Overy lawyers, given the time they had spent on it, to be capable of reeling off "all the documents in the case by heart".

He added: "The picture summoned up by this bill of costs is one which is totally unfamiliar to anyone who has been involved in economically conducted patent litigation."

Two Allen & Overy associates charged more than 4,540 hours on the case, according to court papers, at a total cost of almost £2 million.

The firm, which outspent Visto's lawyers by five-to-one, stressed its fees represented a tiny amount of the financial danger faced by Research in Motion. It is seeking to recover legal costs after winning on key issues in the dispute over wireless technology.

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