hour Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

This law firm bills as much as $3,000 per hour

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 04:36:17 +0000

Law Firms

This law firm bills as much as $3,000 per hour

February 26, 2025, 1:46 pm CST

Some partners at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan bill as much as $3,000 per hour, according to court filings cited by Reuters. (Photo from Shutterstock)

Some partners at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan bill as much as $3,000 per hour, according to court filings cited by Reuters.

The law firm bills between $1,860 and $3,000 per hour for partners, between $1,775 and $2,725 per hour for counsel, and between $1,035 and $1,665 per hour for associates, Reuters reports.

“Quinn Emanuel’s $3,000 top rate marks a milestone for leading U.S. law firms as lawyers’ hourly fees continue to soar,” the article reports. “Law firms routinely raise their rates each year, and top rates at some of the largest U.S. firms have pushed past $2,500 an hour or higher in recent years, court records show.”

The court filings did not indicate which partners are billing $3,000 per hour, but unnamed sources told Reuters that the lawyers are Alex Spiro, who has represented billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and William Burck, the firm’s global co-managing partner.

A Quinn Emanuel spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

Source link

The post This law firm bills as much as $3,000 per hour appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Some top partners in BigLaw will bill nearly $3,000 per hour next year, data says

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 22:06:19 +0000

Partners

Some top partners in BigLaw will bill nearly $3,000 per hour next year, data says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 26, 2024, 12:07 pm CDT

Billing rates for some of the nation’s highest-grossing law firms are expected to continue an upward climb next year. (Image from Shutterstock)

Billing rates for some of the nation’s highest-grossing law firms are expected to continue an upward climb next year.

Some senior partners are expected to bill nearly $3,000 per hour, and a few might top that amount, Law.com reports in a story citing data by Valeo Partners, which analyzes public disclosure documents to discern upcoming rate changes.

Currently, nine firms have standard hourly rates for senior partners that range from about $2,400 to $2,875, according to Chuck Chandler, the CEO of Valeo Partners. Seventeen others will be in that range by 2025, he told Law.com.

Standard billing rates for the nation’s 50 top-grossing firms, however, are expected to be $2,100 for senior partners and $1,900 for other partners.

Valeo Partners didn’t disclose which firms are charging the highest rates for senior partners. Bankruptcy filings reveal, however, that some top partners billed $2,720 per hour this year at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and billed $2,590 per hour last year at McDermott Will & Emery, according to Law.com.

Bankruptcy filings from 2024 reveal that some senior associates billed $1,575 per hour at Sullivan & Cromwell and $1,560 per hour at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Hat tip to Above the Law.

Source link

The post Some top partners in BigLaw will bill nearly $3,000 per hour next year, data says appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Will generative artificial intelligence (finally) spell the end of the billable hour?

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 18:27:12 +0000

Widely hated by lawyers and clients alike, the billable hour has nevertheless proven to be more resilient than cockroaches, Twinkies and those nonbiodegradable containers that you used to get fast-food restaurants.

It seems like every time that there’s a major disruption or event that threatens to upend the legal industry, it spells doom for the billable hour. But that could be more out of hope than anything else. The billable hour survived the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, despite many people thinking—or maybe wishing—that it wouldn’t.

But with the advent of generative artificial intelligence tools that can perform tasks in minutes but might take lawyers or legal professionals hours, could we finally see the end of the billable hour?

In this episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Reid Trautz, a senior director of the Practice and Professionalism Center at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, talks to the ABA Journal’s Victor Li about the thing that so many lawyers and clients love to hate but can’t seem to quit. They discuss the billable hour and how AI might—or might not—affect it.

Want to listen on the go? Legal Rebels is available on several podcast listening services. Subscribe and never miss an episode.
Apple | Spotify | Google Play

In This Podcast:

Reid Trautz

" style="vertical-align:text-top; max-width:80px;"/>

Reid Trautz

Reid Trautz is a senior director of the Practice and Professionalism Center at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, where he advises lawyers on how to improve their businesses and innovate the delivery of legal services to their clients. Trautz is an elected fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and is a Fastcase 50 honoree, which recognizes innovators in legal technology. Trautz co-authors the Future Proofing column for ABA’s Law Practice magazine and currently serves as chair of the Virginia State Bar’s Technology and the Future Practice of Law Committee.

Source link

The post Will generative artificial intelligence (finally) spell the end of the billable hour? appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Lawyers seek over $288K per hour in attorney fees, payable in Tesla stock, for suit toppling Elon Musk’s compensation

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 09 Mar 2024 02:23:27 +0000

Law Firms

Lawyers seek over $288K per hour in attorney fees, payable in Tesla stock, for suit toppling Elon Musk’s compensation

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 4, 2024, 1:28 pm CST

The three law firms that successfully sued to overturn SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $55.8 billion Tesla compensation package are seeking attorney fees payable in company stock worth more than $5.6 billion. (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke via the Associated Press)

The lawyers are seeking about 11% of Tesla shares worth more than $51 billion that were freed up as a result of the litigation, according to the brief supporting the fee application. They are also seeking more than $1 million for litigation expenses.

Law360, Reuters, Fortune and the New York Post have coverage of the fee request.

The fee request amounts to more than $288,000 per hour, according to the 127th footnote in the brief.

“These implied hourly rates and lodestar multiples are admittedly unprecedented,” the brief says. “But that is a function of the gargantuan size of the tort underlying this action, and plaintiff’s counsel’s
achievement of an unprecedented, total victory in challenging that tort.”

The three firms seeking the fees are Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann; Friedman Oster & Tejtel; and Andrews & Springer.

The record for a fee award in a shareholder case was $688 million in 2008, which was awarded to lawyers who sued over the collapse of the Enron Corp., according to the news coverage.

Judge Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s chancery court had ruled Jan. 30 that Musk’s $56 billion pay package was unfair to shareholders, Reuters previously reported.

The name plaintiff in the case is stockholder Richard Tornetta, who was at one time the drummer in the band Dawn of Correction, according to the New York Post.

Source link

The post Lawyers seek over $288K per hour in attorney fees, payable in Tesla stock, for suit toppling Elon Musk’s compensation appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Trump goes to SCOTUS for 11th hour reprieve over Jan. 6 case

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 06:03:53 +0000

Left: This handout provided by the United States Postal Service shows the Yogi Berra stamp, issued on Thursday, June 24, 2021. (United States Postal Service via AP) Right: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a Get Out The Vote rally at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C., Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Former President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon asked the U.S. Supreme Court to put a pause on a recent appellate court ruling rejecting his claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution over the pro-Trump riots at the U.S. Capitol Complex on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist,” the application for a stay pending the filing of a petition for writ of certiorari argues.

The 45th president’s argument is largely pinned on procedural maneuvering — asking for an indefinite kibosh while defense attorneys prepare, and then file, an appeal directly with the nation’s high court.

Procedure is also the key argument advanced in the stay application.

Last week, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled Trump does not have presidential immunity from prosecution on charges that he criminally conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The upshot of that decision, Trump’s stay application claims, is that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan could receive the appellate court’s mandate “in four business days if President Trump did not file an application in [the Supreme] Court to stay the mandate in that time.”

All that potential law and order, the former president argues in his eleventh-hour stay application, is simply too much, too fast. And, Trump claims, there is a familiar bit of legal whiplash in the case.

The bid to pause the criminal proceedings opens with a quote by legendary New York Yankees, and New York Mets, catcher, Yogi Berra.

“This application is ‘déjà vu all over again,”” the 110-page filing by Trump’s attorneys reads.

The filing references an earlier failed effort by special counsel Jack Smith to force the nine justices’ hands and issue a preemptive decision on Trump’s “absolute immunity” claims before the appeals court could review and rule on the issue.

“Two months ago, after the district court denied President Trump’s claim of Presidential immunity in this criminal case, the Special Counsel filed a petition for certiorari before judgment asking this Court to undertake an extraordinary departure from ordinary appellate procedures and decide the vital and historic question of Presidential immunity on a hyper-accelerated basis,” the stay application recalls. “This Court correctly chose to follow standard judicial process and declined to do so.”

Now, Trump argues, because Smith’s efforts to resolve the issue are the impetus behind the appeals court’s per curiam immunity denial, which occurred “in an extraordinarily fast manner,” the Supreme Court should once again rule in the ex-president’s favor.

“This Court should stay the D.C. Circuit’s mandate to forestall, once again, an unprecedented and unacceptable departure from ordinary appellate procedures and allow President Trump’s claim of immunity to be decided in the ordinary course of justice,” the application argues.

Trump’s application says Smith cited only the “imperative public importance of a prompt resolution” of the case when arguing and winning the denial of Trump’s immunity claim before the D.C. Circuit panel — and the subsequent almost-immediate return back to Chutkan’s court.

“In the Court of Appeals, as here, the Special Counsel never explains why it is so ‘imperative’ that this case proceed to trial immediately, forestalling ordinary en banc review and even this Court’s review procedures,” the application goes on. “The prospect that an interlocutory appeal of an immunity question might affect a pending trial date is commonplace and routine.”

In the underlying case, Smith is prosecuting Trump on four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct the U.S. Congress, and conspiracy against rights.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Source link

The post Trump goes to SCOTUS for 11th hour reprieve over Jan. 6 case appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.