This is an appeal by the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare [HEW] from the allowance by the district court of attorneys’ fees to claimants’ attorneys in *161five black lung cases.1 Because the objections of the Secretary to the allowance in all the cases are similar, the cases were consolidated on appeal. We remand for further proceedings.

The Secretary urges that it is manifest the district judge in making the awards in the cases improperly gave consideration to and granted compensation, in part, for work done by claimants’ counsel in administrative proceedings and that, if the time spent in representing the claimants in the administrative proceedings is disregarded, the amounts allowed are grossly excessive on the basis of counsel’s time spent in representation of the claimants before the court. In support of these objections, the Secretary points to the several petitions filed by counsel for the allowance of fees, in all of which counsel, in itemizing their services, and in allocating time spent in such services, include their services in the administrative proceedings. He, also, questions including in the statement of services charges for the preparation of the petition for a fee allowance and of the drafting of the order allowing a fee.2 He would analyze the services of counsel largely in terms of time expended, as shown in the itemized statement of services as filed with the court by counsel. On that basis, he contends that, if the awards are restricted to services in the court proceedings, they vary in hourly charges from approximately $150 to $520. He argues that this great disproportion in allowances, as based on time spent, bespeaks excessiveness. He complains, further, that the awards were all couched in the same language, except for title of case and adjustment of figures to conform to the facts of the particular case, and followed a standard “boiler-plate” form, in which the allowances represented somewhere between roughly 20 and 22 percent of the past-due benefits due in each case. It is apparently his position that this circumstance suggests that the allowance followed a pattern under which fees were awarded perfunctorily, close to the maximum allowable by statute, without a careful review of the services rendered by counsel in the particular case.

The legal objections raised by the Secretary were considered and decided in McKittrick v. Gardner (4th Cir. 1967) 378 F.2d 872, which has generally been regarded as the guiding authority governing the allowance of fees under the Social Security Act. It is unnecessary to repeat all the general considerations stated in that decision for governing the exercise of the district judge’s discretion in the allowance of attorney’s fees in cases such as these. We particularly emphasized in that case that, though, the district judge, in making his award of fees, is properly clothed with considerable discretion, he was neither to consider nor to make any allowance for serv*162ices rendered by counsel in the administrative proceedings. That power to make allowances for those services rests solely with the Secretary. It follows that, lest the district court be misled about the extent of counsel’s services, counsel, in listing the services, expressed in terms of hours expended for which he seeks allowance, should not include any itemization of services rendered in the administrative proceedings.

The Secretary argues vigorously that counsel for the claimants in these cases improperly rested their petitions for a fee substantially on the work performed in the administrative proceedings. He refers, as we have said, to the itemization of services filed by counsel with the district court. In one of the cases identified by the Secretary, where counsel asked for a fee of $4,500 and the district judge allowed $4,200, the hours expended on the administrative proceedings seem to have exceeded those allocated to the court proceedings by approximately three to one. This disparity in hours, he says, shows that a part of the substantial fee requested must have been allocated to the administrative proceedings.3 These circumstances would indicate, the Secretary urges, that the judge, in making his allowances, looked to the total hours of work listed in their itemization by counsel, without possibly noting the differentiation between work done in the administrative proceedings and work in the court proceedings. It does not, of course, necessarily follow that counsel were seeking by their petitions and the district judge was making an award of fees, in part, for services in the administrative proceedings. The facts are such, however, as to make it appropriate for us to remand these proceedings to the district court for clarification.

In remanding, however, we would emphasize again that the allowance of fees in cases such as these is a matter that properly is committed to the discretion of the district judge, whose familiarity with the proceedings uniquely qualifies him to evaluate the services of counsel and to give appropriate weight to the considerations outlined by us in McKittrick.

REMANDED.