Posted on 09/01/2007 4:18:42 PM PDT by shrinkermd
The hourly rates of the country's top lawyers are increasingly coming with something new -- a comma.
A few attorneys crossed into $1,000-per-hour billing before this year, but recent moves to the four-figure mark in New York, which sets trends for legal markets around the country, are seen as a significant turning point.
On Sept. 1, New York's Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP will raise its top rate to more than $1,000 from $950. Firm partner Barry Ostrager, a litigator, says he will be one of the firm's thousand-dollar billers, along with private-equity specialist Richard Beattie and antitrust lawyer Kevin Arquit. The top biller at New York's Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP hit $1,000 per hour earlier this year. At Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, also of New York, bankruptcy attorney Brad Scheler, now at $995 per hour, will likely soon charge $1,000.
At large firms, billable rates have climbed steadily over the years, since 2000 rising an average of 6% to 7% annually, according to the law-firm group of Citi Private Bank, a unit of Citigroup Inc. But for some time, the highest-billing partners at top big-city firms have hovered in the mid-to-high $900 range, hesitant to cross the four-figure threshold. "We have viewed $1,000 an hour as a possible vomit point for clients," says a partner at a New York firm. "Frankly, it's a little hard to think about anyone who doesn't save lives being worth this much money," says David Boies, one of the nation's best-known trial lawyers, at the Armonk, N.Y., office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP
(Excerpt) Read more at collegejournal.com ...
Now, let the economic geniuses who hate lawyers explain that we have an oversupply, yet they are overpriced.
When I travel to various cities around the West, I always look at the yellow pages in the phone books at the sections entitled “ATTORNEYS”.
It is always at least a quarter-inch thick...dwarfing doctors and dentists. That says it all....
If physician's try to do the same the government will come after them.
They must have valuable advise.
David Boies’ performance in the SCO v. IBM and SCO v. Novell cases certainly proves that HE’S not worth 1000/hr, or even much less than that.
We need SOCIALIZED LAW
Where was the outrage during the tobacco PURGE???
Once upon a time, the average person blanched at lawyer fees that reached upward of $500 an hour at many of the best firms.
But those high hourly fees are chump change compared with what Trial Lawyers, Inc. is raking in these days. From tobacco settlements to asbes-to class action suits, the industry now boasts fees that can range as high as an astounding $30,000 an hour, turning some members of Trial Lawyers, Inc. into overnight billionaires and providing the capital to bankroll new lawsuit ventures in new markets.[25]
The Tobacco Settlements
Regardless of one’s view about the merits of the suits, the mega-fees from the 1998 tobacco settlement were nothing but egregious. Some 300 lawyers from 86 firms will pocket as much as $30 billion over the next 25 years even though, for many of them, the suits posed minimal risk and demanded little effort.[26]
That staggering sum comes right out of taxpayers’ pockets—enough money to hire 750,000 teachers. When it comes to big corporations ripping off the public, no one holds a candle to Trial Lawyers, Inc.
More than $8 billion will go to a handful of firms that pioneered the first tobacco lawsuits in Mississippi, Florida, and Texas.27 The Florida teams will take home $3.4 billion, or $233 million per lawyer.[28] That’s $7,716 an hour—assuming they each worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week for three and a half years.[29]
Trial lawyers are now hauling in fees that can range as high as an astounding $30,000 an hour, turning some plaintiffs’ attorneys into overnight billionaires. The branch of Trial Lawyers, Inc. hired by the state of Illinois to handle the tobacco settlement took no depositions and never submitted a reckoning of their hours, but pocketed $121 million—and complained it should have gotten $400 million.[30]
Ohio and Michigan also signed on late in the game—af-ter the heavy lifting had already been done—but their lawsuit industry sections still got $265 million and $450 million, respectively.[31]
The Michigan award alone amounted to $22,500 an hour for the Pascagoula, Mississippi, firm of Richard “Dickie” Scruggs and for Ness Motley, the Charleston, South Carolina, firm that was headed by prominent trial attorney Ron Motley.[32]
Motley, in many ways the “founder” of Trial Lawyers, Inc., helped get the asbestos litigation industry rolling in the 70s. Motley has now moved on to other prey, including lead-paint manufacturers, from whom he hopes to extract more huge sums, along with contingency fees for Trial Lawyers, Inc.[33]
The Scruggs firm will collect $1.4 billion in the tobacco settlement.[34] Scruggs, who might be called the president of the tobacco branch of the lawsuit industry, is now gunning for HMOs.[35
AFTER ALL THE SMOKE CLEARED, THE ANTI-SMOKING FOLKS APPLAUDED THE SETTLEMENT BECAUSE AFTER ALL, IT WAS FOR THE CHILDREN AND THE STATES WHO ALLEGEDLY WERE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THE MEDICAL BILLS OF SMOKERS..............HaHaHaHaHaHa
The $1,000.00 per hour is now chump change...........You reap what you sow.
Yikes! Informative post. Thanks
Yikes! Informative post. Thanks
Yikes! Informative post. Thanks
Hmmm.
I don’t think I’m charging enough...
Time to review my billables.
One thing that puzzles me is the millions of people who get 4 year degrees at school.. then don’t take another two years and get a law degree somewhere. Hell even at a crap school online if neccessary. Just to get their foot in the door.
Ya you won’t work at one of these firms unless you have a prestigious degree.. but even if you get table scrap and make 100$ an hour at some lower firm.. that is a lot lot better then working in some corporate job for 17 dollars an hour.
I also find it interesting that lawers can bill by the minute, as soon as a phone conversation with them begins you get charged.
Doctors spend countless hours each year speaking to family members, responding to emergency calls in the middle of the night; some real, some bogus.
All for free.
Yes, just like medicine access to top attorneys is a right, not a privilege. With all the corporations and doctors and everyone else who is out to hurt the ‘little guy’, we need socialized law so that everyone can exercise their God given right to sue. Also, everyone is entitled to having an OJ-like legal team represent them when they are arrested. It’s only fair.
“Big Law” needs regulation! Socialize law!! /sarcasm
Lawyers make more money combined then Big Oil!
Soul less beasts, devoid of any morality. The prey upon the weak and those in distress. Many get into politics.
“Lawyers make more money combined then Big Oil!
“
I expect they do.
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