The attorneys’ fees were bad enough, but $655 in emergency in-house photocopying! In a 21-page petition filed in the California Superior Court last week, Britney Spears’s lawyers requested the approval of their legal fees. The hearing will be September 25 at 1:30 in Los Angeles County.

Any woman afraid to open an envelope from someone whose name ends in an Esq. will appreciate that this is one time when it’s good to have your dad running your life.

Since February, when Britney went off to a mental hospital for the second time, her father, James P. Spears, has been the Temporary Conservator of her person and a Temporary Conservator of her estate.

Her person seemed to be in fine shape over the weekend when she shined in silver while picking up three Video Music Awards. But her father, along with the lawyer Andrew Wallet, is also responsible for her estate, which means her money and her assets and her bills.

So her father has to paw through all the legal charges associated with her child custody issues as well as business matters. The lawyers fees for the entire divorce and custody battle will surely add up to one of the largest ever in the US. (There is always that case in Connecticut a year ago that ran up $13 million in legal fees. And a Canadian couple recently topped $1 million in legal fees.)

The petition that was just filed in the Spears case lists $248,625 for February through August already paid to the court appointed attorney Samuel D. Ingham.

Ingham, who worked on such matters as trusts and estates, conservatorship, and custody and visitation rights during the dissolution of her marriage, said he charged at the rate of $400 an hour for himself and $225 an hour for his associates, for a total of 663.4 hours.

In the new petition there is also a charge of $33,000 by the lawyer Laura Wasser for two months, June and July. (Wasser had previously been paid $160,000 for custody battles last year, after she quit as Spears's lawyer, and $60,000 for previous charges this year.)

The petition listed another new charge, $55,000 to third lawyer, this one in Florida, over a breach of contract lawsuit concerning a tour.

But these are just recent bills. In March, a court ordered Britney to pay $375,000 in legal fees to lawyers representing her ex, Kevin Federline. In July she was ordered to pay $250,000 to his lawyers. It’s unclear if that was instead of the previous amount, or in addition to it.

And, lest we forget, before Spears had this group of lawyers, she was being represented by, among others, Trope & Trope, who had billed $680,000 in fees and by Stacy Phillips, who billed $407,000 for four months of work.

But those are the big numbers. The current petition reminds us of just how lawyers like to sweat the small stuff. Wasser, Cooperman & Carter enumerated their expenses from January 1 to July 31, including court reporter transcripts, $2,099.94; court filing fees, $1,439; and messenger and courier services, $4,599.38.

Note, that messenger and courier services were “used in lieu of regular mail to maintain control and confidentiality of the documents” because of her celebrity. Some of those papers concerned financial matters, others medical reports on Spears, and others were legal papers. Reporters would have done anything to get their hands on any of them.

The cost for a private room at the courthouse in order to have a conversation with Ms. Spears’s witnesses during court proceedings came to a mere $25. Even Ingham noted that he had “advanced costs” of $102, which had been paid.

Britney Spears’s father’s conservatorship runs out on December 31.

After that, she’s going to be back in charge of her own life, and bills. Go Britney!