Legal News

Weil Math: Two Cases + Seven Months = $109 Million

By Ashby Jones

It’ll be interesting to see just how much Weil Gotshal & Manges moves up the AmLaw 100 for 2009, if at all. While bankruptcy work is serving as a bit of a salve to wounded firms across the country, nowhere is it presumably having as much effect as at Weil, long known as having one of the most elite bankruptcy practices in the nation.

In April, we blogged on the firm’s first fee request in the Lehman bankruptcy; the firm requested $55 million for about five months of work.

On Friday, Weil asked the bankruptcy court to approve the firm as debtor counsel to General Motors — and alerted the court that firm had racked up over $54 million in fees prior to the company’s filing. Jenner & Block, serving as conflicts counsel to GM, has billed over $11 million; Honigman Miller, serving as special counsel to GM, has billed over $15 million. Click here for the American Lawyer story; here, here and here for the Weil, Honigman and Jenner filings, respectively.

Weil bankruptcy partners Stephen Karotkin, Harvey Miller and Joseph Smolinsky appear on the filing, which states that partners advising GM will bill between $650 and $950 per hour with associates billing at hourly rates between $355 and $640.

Jenner bankruptcy practice chair Daniel Murray and corporate reorganization partners Patrick Trostle and Heather McArn are advising GM. Partners from the firm bill between $440 and $960 per hour. At Honigman, the highest-paid lawyer working the matter is Robert Weiss, who’s billing at $565 an hour.

Last month court filings in Chrysler’s Chapter 11 case revealed that Jones Day had billed the company $18.5 million prior to its bankruptcy filing.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 15, 2009 (boomark / email).