[ca] Divorce Attorney Charged Late Husband Excessive Fees

Location is California; San Bernardino County if that matters. My ex and I were in the the process of divorce when he passed suddenly. The divorce never went to settlement/trial and I guess everything will be rolled over to probate now. We had no children, only a marital home and retirement accounts as assets; nothing really to contest except that he didn't want to deal with the divorce and would always request continuances, more time, etc. But there was really nothing to the divorce and it was otherwise straightforward/simple.

At the beginning of the divorce, my lawyer, who is a high profile lawyer that usually deals with 8-9 digit divorces (he took on my case because I am friends with his mentor and she asked him to, and I believe he gave me a discounted rate as well), said that my ex's lawyers were asking for paperwork/trying to get them to fill out forms that he said were absolutely ridiculous for the size of our assets. He said that he never dealt with this kind of legwork until 9 digit dissolutions, and I don't remember what else he said as this was years ago, but that he felt that they were likely nickel and dimeing my ex and doing all this to inflate my ex's attorney fees. My ex and I were on speaking terms still, and at one point my ex mentioned how his lawyer made him go to their office and meet for 8 hours to go over everything in the very beginning, etc, which was crazy to ME as I had covered everything with my lawyer in one 2 hour meeting.

I warned my ex then that I thought they were trying to inflate fees, but he ignored me and kept them as counsel (reasonable, as you should not take legal advice from your opponent lol). They "fired" him a few months before he died, likely for nonpayment although that was not the stated reason to the judge (their official reason was covered under client/attorney confidentiality) and he didn't contest them asking to be removed as counsel. He hadn't obtained new counsel before he passed.

I understand they will likely file a claim against his estate during probate and that's totally fair. I found their unpaid invoices in his files. But I noticed something strange in that they were charging things like 0.10 hours for e-mailing client then 0.10 hours for leaving a voicemail to client to notify him of e-mail. I went back in his e-mails for that date just to see and it was like he asked them a question, they responded with "Yes.", then apparently charged for that and whatever VM they left him. There were no other e-mails on that date or anywhere near that date, so it's not like they were confusing something else. They also charged for reading the e-mail as a separate charge than replying to it.

They also charged for things like discussing matters between the lawyer and her paralegal. So if the lawyer had a discussion with the paralegal, they would do stuff like charge 0.20 hours. Then the paralegal would charge whatever it took to draft something as per normal.

Isn't this egregious? Is this something I should investigate in more detail, organize the invoices and give a copy of these e-mails to the probate attorney when I secure one to contest their claim? I'm not sure if my perspective is warped because of my personal link to my divorce lawyer and he was being "nice" to me, but he only charged for stuff that took more than 15 minutes, and even then he didn't always bill for phone calls with me. He also almost never charged for e-mails unless there was a lot of back-and-forth with opposing counsel, and never charged for e-mails with me unless it had involved some legwork to provide the answer.

But this just seems unethical to charge for these things and I don't know if my gut is right on this or not.