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