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Trials & Litigation

Wilmer Asks for $1.3M Legal Fee, Gets $730K + Lecture from Judge

Posted Mar 2, 2009 8:10 PM CST
By Martha Neil

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr hasn't had a lot of luck lately when requesting legal fee reimbursements in a long-running whistle-blower case.

Last summer, when WilmerHale and co-counsel Wiley Rein sought $20 million in fees in Miller v. Bill Harbert International Construction Inc., Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia chopped the total to $7.5 million. Thursday, he took a similar scything approach to WilmerHale's latest $1.3 million fee request for post-trial work, approving only $730,000, reports Legal Times in an article reprinted by New York Lawyer (reg. req.).

In his written opinion (PDF), Lamberth lectures WilmerHale for vague billing entries and "excessive" use of top-billing partners, and nixes its attempt to apply 2008 billable rates to work done in 2007. He also says some clerical work should have been counted as office overhead rather than included in the legal bill.

Each of the four post-trial briefs the firm wrote was put together by a team of one senior partner and one associate, using another six associates for research. Four partners then reviewed each brief, the Legal Times article explains.

Says Lamberth in his latest opinion: "The court is wary of allowing this case to become a cash cow for [WilmerHale's] attorneys, in which they can run up bills by having senior partners do excessive work knowing that the defendants will eventually have to foot the bill."

Comments

1.

B. McLeod
Mar 2, 2009 8:45 PM CST

Of course, they know he’s going to cut it, so the padding-up is a little craftier each time.  Note that the amount actually approved is a progressively larger fraction of the fee request each time.

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2.

That Lawyer Dude
Mar 2, 2009 11:25 PM CST

Let’s see. These companies ripped off the public fisc, and the judge is worried they may pay too much to attorneys??? Let them hang, that is the penalty they pay for being the thieves they are. If they were a little burglar, we would give em jail, a fine, a surcharge, a DNA fee, A crime victims comp fee, charge them to house them in the prison we put them into and then for the salary of the Parole officer who oversees their rehab. Yeah I feel so bad for these defendants.

Based on the fact here, the judge is acting like a corporate tool and he is trying to turn the tables to make these thieves look like victims and the lawyers who won the case and protected the public at their own expense as the perps.

Here’s an idea, after the they lose the case, let the corp go before a board of people taxed out of their homes because these guys ripped off the public fisc and let them see if they are bothered by the attorney’s fees.

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3.

B. McLeod
Mar 2, 2009 11:41 PM CST

Sounds like the “parable of the second thief.”  These defendants ripped people off, so it is OK for the lawyers to pad the bills.  I think this would actually be a case of “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

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4.

Bill Dugan
Mar 3, 2009 3:43 AM CST

Yes, it’s like my girlfriend asking for more than she is going to get, just so she gets what she originally wanted. 

She’s holding out for a 2 Carot Diamond, but asking for a 2.5 carat diamond.  She knows damn well I don’t have enough money for the 2 carat, yet INSISTS that she should have a 2.5 carat, because I am a lawyer, and she will be looking at it (as will her stupid friends) for the next 40 years or so.

I told her I don’t want to be in hock for the next 40 years watching her look at her finger.

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