lodestars

Noun

lodestar (plural lodestars)

1. A star used as a navigation reference, particularly a pole star such as Polaris.
   • Tho when her ways he could no more descry,
     But to and fro at disaventure strayd;
     Like as a ship, whose lodestarre, suddenly
     Covered with cloudes, her pilot hath dismayd1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
2. (figuratively) A guiding tenet or principle.
   • Selfe loue, to him ſelf tender, to the reſt tough, / Is, of iuſt iuſtice, neither roote, braunce, nor bough. / Loue (namely ſelfe loue) corruptibly growyng, / Is cheefe lodeſter of lets, in iuſtice ſhowing.1556, John Heywood, chapter 7, in The Spider and the Flie. […], London: […] Tho[mas] Powell, →OCLC; republished as A[dolphus] W[illiam] Ward, editor, The Spider and the Flie. […] (Publications of the...
3. A calculated amount to award as attorney's fees derived by multiplying the reasonable number of hours spent working on a case by the reasonable hourly billing rate.
   • Many, though not all, of the objections to lodestars seem to us to be overstated.1992, Richard L. Marcus, Complex litigation: cases and materials on advanced civil procedure