Dublin City Council spent nearly €2.5million on legal fees last year.
According to freedom of information figures, it was paid to nearly 60 barristers and solicitors' firms.
These new figures show the local authority's total legal bill for 2021 was €2.48million.
Almost a third of that - or €893,000 euro - was paid to the law firm Byrne Wallace.
The next highest was almost €231,000 to the barrister John Doherty.
Rogers Law Solicitors got nearly €130,000, and Senior Counsel Conleth Bradley got almost €122,000.
Barrister and Fine Gael senator Barry Ward is defending the total bill.
"Dublin City Council has an annual budget of almost €1billion, and it takes responsibility for doing a lot of things on behalf of the four Dublin local authorities," he said.
"In that context, I think there are very few organisations operating at that level in terms of budgetary matters that would have a legal bill as small as that."
Two other amounts also exceeded €100,000 last year.
They were paid to Senior Counsel Stephen Dodd, and the law firm William Fry.
However, over 30 law firms or barristers got payments of less than €10,000.
