5/12    "The lead attorney in the case, Eugene Crew, planned to ask the
        judge Wednesday for more than $18.5 million in fees. He told
        the judge in legal briefs that he deserves about $3,000 for
        each of his 6,189.6 billable hours, "considering the enormity
        of this undertaking against the most powerful corporation in
        America."
        \_ fucking lawyers
           \_ yeah, and don't forget all the hours that they fuck the client
              for three grand, but have some paralegal do the work at 12 bucks
              an hour.
              \_ Why do you hate capitalism?
                 \- it's not capitalism, it is self-regulation ... see e.g.
                    the Texas Bar suit again Nolo Press [which fortunately
                    they lost]. --psb
              \_ they probably fuck the paralegal too
        \_ What is this about?
           \_ M$ antitrust
        \_ To be fair, it's typical that class action firms charge what seems
           like larger-than-normal hourly fees for their hours. The reasons:
           1) If they lose, they don't get paid. At all. If "Crew" had not
              won that case, that's 3 years of working for no salary.
           2) They have to pay for the costs of the case up front and only
              get paid back many years later (and only if they win).
           So usually a firm like that gets what is called "lodestar" fees
           which multiply the normal hourly rate by 2x or 3x to make up for
           the above two points. Normal hourly rates for attorneys are
           $3-400 or so, with super exceptional ones $600ish. So, by any
           metric, this would seem like an exceptionally large amount to
           charge. However, note that if the case was on contingency, he'd
           be getting 1/3 of the settlement, which is way more than $3k/hour.
           \_ $3-400 normal hourly rate!  That's 6-8 times what I'm getting for
              being a senior software engineer.
              \_ Right, but if you were working for a consulting firm, they'd
                 probably be billing you out at that sort of rate. $3-400
                 includes lots of other costs besides attorney salary, like
                 staff salary, rent, copying, couriers, etc.
                 \_ I see.
              \_ $50 an hour?  Your fully burdened cost is double that.
        \_ My attorney fiancee reports that "those lawyers did a fantastic
           job" and deserve $3k/hour. The California settlement is a really
           good one for consumers; in fact, it's a larger settlement than
           the *national* settlement. She said that basically when you take
           a case like this, if you fail, you're bankrupt; if Townsend had
           lost the case, there would have been no more Townsend. Other firms
           suffer the same problem (in the IBM toxics/cancer recent case,
           Alexander Hawes & Audet lost and is now in serious financial
           condition).