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Reuters
24-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US lobbying firms see early revenue boost in Trump's second term
April 24 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to opens new tab) Top firms in Washington, D.C., are reporting an influx of lobbying dollars as companies, industry groups and others navigate President Donald Trump's second term in office and a Republican-controlled Congress. U.S. law firm Akin said the first quarter of 2025 was its strongest ever for lobbying revenue. It brought in $16.4 million, an 18.75% increase from the first quarter of 2024. Trump's aggressive moves on tariffs and trade have made it critical for companies to have a voice in Washington, said Brian Pomper, the co-leader of Akin's lobbying and public policy practice. "For the first time, trade really is a C-suite issue," Pomper said. He said he has never been busier in his 20-year lobbying career. Lobbyists in Washington are required to report revenue tied to the federal government each quarter under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Pomper said Trump's policies on trade, tax and healthcare issues are also generating large amounts of non-lobbying work for the law firm that is not subject to the disclosure law. Ballard Partners also had a big first quarter. The lobbying firm pulled in $14 million, a 225% increase from the first quarter of 2024, according to Politico Influence. Partners at Ballard did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ballard's connections to the Trump administration include Pam Bondi, who worked at the Tallahassee-founded firm before she was tapped to serve as U.S. attorney general. Ballard's president has been a top Florida fundraiser for Republican candidates, including Trump in 2016. Two major law firms — Kirkland & Ellis and Simpson Thacher — each paid Ballard Partners $100,000 during the first quarter to lobby on matters related to employment practices, disclosures show. Kirkland and Simpson Thacher were among nine prominent firms that cut deals with the White House to avoid getting hit with an executive order seeking to curtail business operations. Ballard was also hired in January to represent the Harvard University governing body known as the Harvard Corporation. Trump since his inauguration has cracked down on top U.S. universities, saying they mishandled last year's pro-Palestinian protests and allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses. Harvard sued this week to block the White House from freezing billions of dollars in federal funding. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, another law firm with a leading lobbying practice, said its first-quarter work was driven partly by higher education clients. The firm reported earning $16.8 million in the first quarter of 2025, a 3.5% increase from the same quarter last year. The firm is representing the University of Colorado and DePaul University, according to disclosure filings. "Our team understands the complexities and risks facing colleges and universities right now with the new administration's executive orders," Nadeam Elshami, the co-chair of Brownstein's government relations department, said in a statement. Two other firms — BGR Group and Cornerstone Government Affairs — also reported year-over-year increases for the quarter. BGR Group said it brought in $14.6 million in revenue, while Cornerstone reported $13.6 million. Holland & Knight, another U.S. law firm with a lobbying practice, reported $13 million in lobbying revenue for the first quarter of 2025, a 5.4% increase from the first quarter of 2024. Companies, trade groups and other entities have continuously spent more money on lobbying since 2016, according to the non-profit group OpenSecrets, which compiles lobbying records. In 2024, companies spent more than $4.43 billion to lobby Congress and federal agencies. -- The National Abortion Federation is entitled to recover legal fees and costs from the conservative Center for Medical Progress and other defendants in a long-running lawsuit in federal court in California, an appeals court ruled, opens new tab on Wednesday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district judge's orders awarding millions of dollars in fees to the abortion rights advocate in its battle over an activist's secretly recorded videos. The court panel said the fact that lawyers for the National Abortion Federation were working pro bono did not change the legal analysis for awarding fees. The federation and Center for Medical Progress did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters
17-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Bitcoin miner accuses K&L Gates of botching bankruptcy claim, overbilling
April 17 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to opens new tab) A bitcoin mining company has sued K&L Gates and one of its bankruptcy partners, alleging that the law firm overcharged legal fees while failing to perform a simple bankruptcy task, leading to a $24 million lawsuit against the bitcoin miner. Jumpstart your morning with the latest legal news delivered straight to your inbox from The Daily Docket newsletter. Sign up here. The lawsuit from Gryphon Digital Mining, filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, opens new tab, seeks an unspecified amount of damages from K&L Gates after the firm allegedly failed to file a claim on its behalf in the bankruptcy case of Core Scientific Inc. "Proofs of claim are routinely filed out of an abundance of caution simply to preserve a party's rights. It is Bankruptcy 101," the lawsuit said. Gryphon said it paid K&L Gates more than $2.7 million in legal fees and alleged that most of the fees were "unnecessary and are not supported by any proper accounting or billing records." The lawsuit named the firm and Robert Honeywell, a New York-based partner who specializes in bankruptcy litigation, as defendants. Honeywell and a spokesperson for the firm did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Gryphon's lawyers at Miller Barondess did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Gryphon retained K&L Gates in August 2021 as the company was planning to merge with Sphere 3d Corp, another bitcoin miner. Although the merger was called off months later, a contract the two companies had signed remained in effect. In September 2021, Core reached a $35 million deal with Gryphon to provide the infrastructure to host 71,000 of Gryphon's cryptocurrency mining machines. K&L Gates represented Gryphon in that deal as well. Core filed for bankruptcy in December 2022. Gryphon alleged in its lawsuit that K&L Gates never monitored the proceedings and missed an April 2023 deadline for filing a proof of claim. Gryphon later retained lawyers from Hogan Lovells. Sphere later sued Gryphon in Manhattan federal court for $24 million. Among other things, Sphere accused Gryphon of breaching its fiduciary duty by failing to file a claim in the Core bankruptcy. Gryphon and Sphere settled in March 2025. The company said it was "forced to forego millions of dollars in valuable counterclaims in exchange for resolving Sphere's $24 million breach of fiduciary duty claim that arose from K&L Gates' mistake." --Law firms that negotiated more than $60 million in antitrust settlements with aerospace giant RTX's Pratt & Whitney unit and other companies have asked a federal judge to award them $20.2 million in legal fees. In a court filing, opens new tab, Quinn Emanuel and DiCello Levitt said the fee request was fair and reasonable given the complexity of the case and the risks they took in pursuing it. RTX denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. The lead Quinn Emanuel partner on the lawsuit, Daniel Brockett, who heads the firm's financial institution litigation practice, normally charges $2,030 an hour, according to billing records submitted, opens new tab with the petition. Quinn Emanuel recently disclosed in an unrelated case that some of its top partners are billing $3,000 an hour. --Another group of law firms, including Cohen Milstein and Quinn Emanuel, asked a U.S. judge, opens new tab in Manhattan this week to award them $35.5 million in legal fees and expenses in an antitrust lawsuit against Wall Street banks. The request, stemming from $71 million in settlements, includes $23.4 million in expenses. The plaintiffs' lawyers called the requested amount "a small fraction of the huge amounts that class counsel invested in this case" over nine years. The suit alleged an illegal boycott of a specific type of emerging trading platform. U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken declined to allow the suit to proceed as a class action. An expert for the plaintiffs had estimated class-wide damages of $4.5 billion.
Reuters
10-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Former top Trump diplomat settles legal fee fight for $1.1 million
April 10 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to opens new tab) The U.S. State Department has agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle a lawsuit over legal fees sought by a former top U.S. official who testified against President Donald Trump during his first impeachment. Gordon Sondland, who served as Trump's ambassador to the European Union, accused the State Department in a 2021 lawsuit of violating an oral agreement to pay his legal bills, which he said were $1.8 million. Sondland, a wealthy Republican donor and hotelier, testified to lawmakers about Trump's interactions with Ukraine in 2019, ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Sondland was fired in 2020. Sondland was represented at the time of Trump's impeachment by a team from Paul Hastings, including Washington litigator Robert Luskin and another top partner Kwame Manley. The then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had denied ever agreeing to pay Sondland's legal tab. In January, Sondland's case seeking fees went to a bench trial in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, but the sides reached a settlement before any final order. The State Department paid $1.1 million on March 31, records show. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'Ambassador Sondland simply sought to hold the government accountable for the clear and unequivocal commitments made to him by former Secretary of State Pompeo and other State Department officials,' Sondland's attorney, Mark Barondess, said in a statement. Barondess called the settlement "a rare example of the government being bound to an oral agreement." He said courts enforce such agreements "only under very strict conditions and are generally reluctant to do so unless the facts are unusually compelling." At trial, Manley, who is Paul Hastings' global litigation head, testified that the work the firm did for Sondland was extensive and urgent. 'He knew he was not going to look to the yellow pages or to someone on TV to hire for this,' said Manley, who told the court that he bills at about $1,900 an hour now. In congressional investigations and crisis management, Manley said, "you drop everything, you work 16 hours a day." -- In other legal fee news, a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Wednesday rejected White & Case's $430,000 bill for less than two weeks of work in the bankruptcy of crypto company Terraform Labs, saying the law firm was never formally retained to represent Terraform's junior creditors. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon, who is overseeing Terraform Labs' Chapter 11 filing, said during a Wednesday court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, that lawyers must be formally retained and submit fee applications if they want to be paid from funds provided by a bankrupt company. Terraform is the company behind the stablecoin TerraUSD, which collapsed and roiled cryptocurrency markets in 2022. Spokespeople for White & Case, Terraform and Weil, Gotshal & Manges — which is representing Terraform Labs in the bankruptcy — did not immediately respond to requests for comment. -- Brown Rudnick said Friday it will pay about $8 million to resolve a dispute over the law firm's bankruptcy work for exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, who was convicted on fraud charges in the U.S. last year for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from online followers. Guo retained Brown Rudnick to represent him when he filed for personal bankruptcy in February 2022. Guo's bankruptcy case was turned over months later to a Chapter 11 trustee — Luc Despins of Paul Hastings — after creditors argued that Guo was hiding assets and not complying with court orders. Despins said Friday that Guo's creditors had legal claims against Brown Rudnick over its advice and Guo's conduct in the early days of the bankruptcy. But a settlement was the best option, providing money for creditors without the risk or delay of litigation, according to the trustee. Brown Rudnick said in a statement that it "unequivocally denies" the trustee's legal claims but was pleased to resolve the matter. The firm will return $948,000 that it received as a retainer payment and pay an additional $7 million, according to the settlement agreement. A spokesperson for Paul Hastings did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Latham, Northwestern seek fees from conservative group in bias case
Reuters
20-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Purdue Pharma fees surpass $250 million for Davis Polk amid new bankruptcy plan
March 20 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to opens new tab) Purdue Pharma's bankruptcy entered a new, possibly final phase this week when the drugmaker filed a new $7.4 billion plan to resolve thousands of lawsuits that alleged its OxyContin pain medication caused a widespread opioid addiction crisis in the United States. Jumpstart your morning with the latest legal news delivered straight to your inbox from The Daily Docket newsletter. Sign up here. The complex bankruptcy has fueled several appeals, including a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that upended an earlier proposed $6 billion settlement that also would have shielded Purdue's wealthy Sackler family owners from civil liability. Along the way, Purdue's journey through the courts has generated sprawling fees for the army of attorneys and other professionals in the case, not least for the company's lead bankruptcy lawyers at Davis Polk & Wardwell. The New York law firm alone has received or requested more than a quarter of a billion dollars in fees since the bankruptcy began in 2019, a review of court filings shows. A U.S. bankruptcy judge in White Plains, New York has approved $246 million so far for the Davis Polk team, led by the firm's restructuring practice co-head Marshall Huebner. The firm has requested another $12.2 million for its work from September 2024 through January. The fees include a 20% discount on the lawyers' standard rates, according to recent court records. Huebner's current hourly rate is $2,645, Davis Polk said, opens new tab in a fee statement earlier this month. Associates at the firm reported hourly billing rates as high as $1,780, and several law clerks billed at $1,065. The statement, covering the month of January, included 54 lawyers and other hourly billers who spent a combined 1,775 hours on the case. Huebner and a spokesperson for Davis Polk had no immediate comment. A spokesperson for Purdue Pharma did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Similarly high billing rates have become the norm in the largest corporate bankruptcies . A recent Reuters review of court filings in other cases showed that several firms are now charging top hourly rates above $2,500. Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2019 to address its debts, nearly all of which stemmed from thousands of lawsuits alleging that OxyContin helped kickstart an opioid epidemic that has caused more than half a million U.S. overdose deaths over two decades. The new formal bankruptcy plan Purdue Pharma filed Tuesday fleshes out the settlement with new details about how the money will be allocated to states, local governments and individuals harmed by the crisis. The company plans to begin soliciting votes and opt-in decisions from its creditors in May. After that, the plan would be submitted for final court approval. -- Alan Dershowitz is no longer on the hook to pay more than $12,220 as a sanction for his limited work on an election-related lawsuit on behalf of failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week held, opens new tab that "of counsel" lawyers can be sanctioned for signing court pleadings that are frivolous and lack factual basis. But the court said it would not apply that standard retroactively to Dershowitz, who had argued that he played only a nominal "of counsel" role in Lake's failed lawsuit challenging the use of electronic voting machines. -- U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan awarded $5.6 million, opens new tab in fees to attorneys at Labaton Keller Sucharow as part of a $19.5 million settlement in a securities class action against Barclays. The plaintiffs' attorneys said they spent more than 2,453 hours, opens new tab on the case. Barclays, represented by Sullivan & Cromwell, denied any wrongdoing. Barclays declined to comment, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for one. -- Credit Suisse was on the losing side in a Texas appeal and is on the hook now to pay $500,000 in legal fees, opens new tab to the lawyers for a former wealth advisor at the firm who fought the banking giant over deferred compensation and other matters tied to his departure from the firm. The 5th Court of Appeals in a ruling said arbitrators did not exceed their power in awarding fees to Rogge Dunn Group. A spokesperson for Credit Suisse, now owned by UBS, declined to comment. A lawyer for the plaintiff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters
20-02-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Law firm Venable hit with $10 mln lawsuit by ex-client in FDA fight
Feb 20 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to opens new tab) For three years, law firm Venable represented a California clinic fighting claims by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it was selling unauthorized stem cell therapy treatments. Now the clinic is suing Venable and one of its lawyers, opens new tab for more than $10 million, arguing that the law firm betrayed its trust and spread false claims about the clinic's medical practices in a different case. The California Stem Cell Treatment Center asked a California state judge last week to order Venable to pay back all of the fees it has paid, plus another $10 million in compensatory damages. The clinic said it already paid approximately $500,000 to Venable, and that the firm claims it still owes another $532,000 in unpaid bills. A spokesperson for Venable and counsel Thomasina Poirot, who was named as a defendant, declined to comment. A lawyer for the clinic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Venable led the clinic's defense team in the FDA case, opens new tab until one of its partners joined rival firm Jones Day in April 2021. Venable remained "intimately, actively involved in all aspects of the case through trial and beyond," the clinic said in its February 13 lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal in Riverside, California, held a bench trial in the FDA's case in 2021 and eventually sided with the California clinic, ruling in August 2022 that its stem cell treatments did not fall under the FDA's regulatory purview. By the time the ruling was issued, all of the remaining Venable lawyers representing the clinic had withdrawn from the case. Meanwhile, the clinic and other defendants were sued for alleged medical malpractice in Washington state court in January 2022. The lawsuit claimed that a patient, Michael Trujillo, died from complications associated with the injection of stem cells into his spine. Venable and Poirot began representing a defendant in the Trujillo case, a Seattle-based stem cell doctor, without the California clinic's consent and without notifying it first, according to the clinic's lawsuit against Venable. In that role, Venable and Poirot falsely claimed that the California clinic's techniques contributed to Trujillo's death, damaging the reputations of the clinic and the doctors who run it, the lawsuit said. The clinic said it received "summary adjudication" in the malpractice case because none of its affiliates actually treated Trujillo. But it said it had to pay $200,000 in legal fees relating to the case, and could spend more if there's an appeal. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Bernal's decision in the FDA case in September, finding that the clinic's treatment procedure is subject to FDA regulation. Celeste Brecht, a Jones Day partner who represented the clinic both at trial and on appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. -- In other news, U.S. plaintiffs' lawyers who negotiated a $275 million settlement with Swiss generic drugmaker Sandoz said they will ask a judge to award them up to $91.6 million in fees. The settlement, filed in federal court in Pennsylvania this week, resolves consumer and other buyers' claims that Sandoz conspired with other pharmaceutical companies to inflate the prices of some drugs. Sandoz denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. The company said it will cooperate with the plaintiffs as they pursue claims against other drugmakers. Panama Canal Authority hires US law firm amid Trump threats
