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Attorney Fees

Bankruptcy Judge Nixes Sidley’s Top $1,100 Hourly Rate, OKs $925

Posted Feb 20, 2009 3:03 PM CST
By Martha Neil

In a hearing today, a federal bankruptcy court judge in Wilmington, Del., said he won't OK a top $1,100 hourly fee requested by Sidley Austin in a newspaper company's case.

But U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Kevin Carey approved a top hourly fee of $925 in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy, Bloomberg reports. The billable rates charged by the Chicago-based firm in the case start at $575 for some attorneys, according to a Dec. 26 filing requesting court approval of legal fees.

The $1,100 rate requested is higher than any in a database kept by Lynn LoPucki, who teaches bankruptcy law at the University of California at Los Angeles.

However, it was just a bit less than the $1,110 requested last month by Chicago-based Kirkland & Ellis in a corporate bankruptcy case in which it is representing Tronox Inc. There's no word yet on whether that fee request was approved.

Additional coverage:

ABAJournal.com: "Kirkland & Ellis Seeks Fee of $18.50 a Minute for Bankruptcy Work"

Comments

1.

B. McLeod
Feb 20, 2009 8:21 PM CST

Obviously, there is a growing need for Congress to amend the bankruptcy statutes to cap hourly rates for legal fees.  $300/hour would be about right for the max, and to preclude the padding that might otherwise follow, there should also be mandatory audits of fee applications.

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2.

chuck
Feb 21, 2009 7:22 PM CST

$300/hr? Nothing arbitrary there. Most firms doing this type of work bill out their new associates at more than this.

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3.

B. McLeod
Feb 21, 2009 9:47 PM CST

The $300/hour suggestion is actually ample.  In all frankness, bankruptcy court is the “traffic court” of the whole federal system.  It isn’t all that complex, and there are quite a few extremely good bankruptcy lawyers around the country who would be glad to do this work for $120 to $170 an hour.  The subject of this story is just another example of Big Law inflation, brought to us by that faction of practice that equates “reasonable fee” with “whatever we can extract.”  It is the absence of any real dignity (and any sense of shame) in the conduct of the largest firms that has brought down the image of the profession.

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4.

tim
Feb 23, 2009 7:02 AM CST

Obama will make sure everyone makes the same wage before he is done.

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5.

Sara
Feb 23, 2009 9:06 AM CST

The government should tell you what you can make and how much.  Why should a lawyer be able to charge as much as he wants?

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6.

AndytheLawyer
Feb 27, 2009 9:52 AM CST

Tim—during the Bush years prior to mid-2007, the national wealth increased by around $800 billion.  $600 billion of that wound up in the hands of the top 1% of american income earners.  Revolutions have been based on less.

Wealth equality won’t ever happen.  But give people—even Americans—the choice between no income due to mass layoffs and some income because those at the uppermost end are earning less, freeing up mroe capital to employ more people, and they’ll choose the latter every single time—and rightly so.  The free-market-at-all costs ideology of extreme American conservatives fails at such moments because Americans just aren’t good at sitting back quietly and starving during protracted joblessness.

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