$275M Activision Buyout Settlement Gives Lawyers $9,500 Per Hour

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$9,500 an hour for legal fees? Whoa, I don't even think Apple lawyers make that kind of money! ;)

A Delaware judge on Wednesday approved a $275 million shareholder settlement involving videogame maker Activision Blizzard Inc and awarded the small law firms that brought the case a $72.5 million fee. The fee award works out to $9,500 an hour, according to court records. "While the size of the award implies a generous hourly rate, in this case it is justified by the effort," wrote Laster.
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Very disingenuous. Plaintiff's attorneys work on a %-of-winnings basis, usually 20-30%. So after a huge win like that, then yes, if you broke it down for some reason by hour, then it looks very high. But if they hadn't won, then they would not have gotten paid.

Here, it was a 26% fee, which is a little low considering the caliber of company and lawsuit and client.

Keep in mind, the math means the attorneys spent nearly 800 hours working on ONE case. I suspect there aren't many people anywhere that spend that kind of time on a single issue.
 
Bullshit, no one should make $9,500 an hour. Period. Ever. A high-end prostitute should be our benchmark for the highest reasonable hourly wage.

Anything else is just a huge misallocation of society's resources, and then we wonder why the rich get richer and the middle class is disappearing.
 
Very well stated Modred. Most attorneys I've worked with are around 33 - 38% in legal fees. In large cases like this the amount of work that goes into it is mind boggingly large.
 
Ducman69 said:
Bullshit, no one should make $9,500 an hour. Period. Ever. A high-end prostitute should be our benchmark for the highest reasonable hourly wage.

Anything else is just a huge misallocation of society's resources, and then we wonder why the rich get richer and the middle class is disappearing.
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High end courtesans make well more than that so perhaps you should reconsider your bar.
 
Modred189 said:
Very disingenuous. Plaintiff's attorneys work on a %-of-winnings basis, usually 20-30%. So after a huge win like that, then yes, if you broke it down for some reason by hour, then it looks very high. But if they hadn't won, then they would not have gotten paid.

Here, it was a 26% fee, which is a little low considering the caliber of company and lawsuit and client.

Keep in mind, the math means the attorneys spent nearly 800 hours working on ONE case. I suspect there aren't many people anywhere that spend that kind of time on a single issue.
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800 man hours doesn't seem like much to be honest that's 2 40 hour weeks on 1 case for 10 attorneys. Or a month for 5 etc etc.
 
Modred189 said:
Keep in mind, the math means the attorneys spent nearly 800 hours working on ONE case. I suspect there aren't many people anywhere that spend that kind of time on a single issue.
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Just to clarify this part, there were four attorneys at one firm and six lawyers at the other firm; 72,500,000 / 9,500 = 7631 hours total, divided by ten equals 763 hours for each partner of the two firms.

If you think these firms consist of four and six employees total, that's not how it works at all.
 
Ducman69 said:
Bullshit, no one should make $9,500 an hour. Period. Ever. A high-end prostitute should be our benchmark for the highest reasonable hourly wage.

Anything else is just a huge misallocation of society's resources, and then we wonder why the rich get richer and the middle class is disappearing.
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Well, is this per hour, or per man-hour?

Could it be that the compensation is $9,500 per hour for 30 lawyers, averaging a more typical lawyer rate of ~$317 per hour per lawyer?
 
Zarathustra[H];1041616500 said:
Well, is this per hour, or per man-hour?

Could it be that the compensation is $9,500 per hour for 30 lawyers, averaging a more typical lawyer rate of ~$317 per hour per lawyer?
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It's $9500 per hour for 10 partners of law firms. Each of these partners probably have many lawyers working under them. A quick and dirty Google search did not tell me how many lawyers work at these firms, but suggesting that 2 or more lawyers worked for each partner does not seem out of line to me.
 
dont forget the 30+ paralegals that probably put in 60-90 hours per every 1 hour a lawyer did, so its probably closer to 4k per lawer/hr.
 
Ducman69 said:
Bullshit, no one should make $9,500 an hour. Period. Ever. A high-end prostitute should be our benchmark for the highest reasonable hourly wage.

Anything else is just a huge misallocation of society's resources, and then we wonder why the rich get richer and the middle class is disappearing.
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You realize this is what's called "revenue". Revenue is what someone makes BEFORE expenses. Just like you making $40,000 a year doesn't mean $40,000 goes into your bank account. You have to pay for rent, food, insurance, taxes, etc...

Even if they did make $9,500/hr which i highly doubt, it would more likely come out to $1,000 to $500/hr as others above have calculated, they still have to pay the rent on their office, insurance, taxes (which includes employee payroll taxes), etc. So while it SOUNDS like a lot of money, when you calculate a probability of failure and the fact that they don't make this money all year round, it's perfectly reasonable.

In addition, the rich are not getting richer as you claim. The majority of people in the highest tax bracket are not in that same bracket the following year and the majority of people who are in the lowest bracket in their youth do not end their lives in that same bracket. Actual flesh and blood people move between brackets and generally move up.
 
Modred189 said:
Very disingenuous. Plaintiff's attorneys work on a %-of-winnings basis, usually 20-30%. So after a huge win like that, then yes, if you broke it down for some reason by hour, then it looks very high. But if they hadn't won, then they would not have gotten paid.

Here, it was a 26% fee, which is a little low considering the caliber of company and lawsuit and client.

Keep in mind, the math means the attorneys spent nearly 800 hours working on ONE case. I suspect there aren't many people anywhere that spend that kind of time on a single issue.
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for 9.5k an hour I would!
 
I'm a lawyer so I feel like I should comment here. An 8 billable hour day could mean that I actually worked close to 16 hours. There have been several days where I worked a full day but was only able to bill out 2 to 3 hours.
 
GTFO. Even world-famous doctors don't make that much. Overpaid, and underworked. Whoopee they can bullshit out of a situation on behalf of somebody. Sooooooooooooooooo much hard work, yo. What, does the common man work any less?
 
Also a 26% contingency fee is fairly low. Depending on the circumstances I would charge as much as 50%
 
Climber said:
Very well stated Modred. Most attorneys I've worked with are around 33 - 38% in legal fees. In large cases like this the amount of work that goes into it is mind boggingly large.
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Most attorneys do not work with such clients. It is a normal rate for a high profile client. Is it to high that is another discussion, but it is in the typical range for such clients.
 
Normal doesn't mean right.

Its normal that roughly 27% of people in Swaziland have AIDS, but that doesn't mean that its a good thing and doesn't need to be fixed.

We are funneling too much money into the legal system, with many lawyers like my uncle getting insanely rich from such BS profiteering that creates no true goods or services for society. Legal disputes matter, but they don't matter $9700 per person an hour.
 
Ducman69 said:
Bullshit, no one should make $9,500 an hour. Period. Ever. A high-end prostitute should be our benchmark for the highest reasonable hourly wage.
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Floyd Mayweather made $135,000 per SECOND in his last fight... Just sayin' :eek:
 
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