Stats Of The Week: The Legal Costs Of Deflategate vs. Watergate

How do the legal costs associated with Deflategate and Watergate compare?

onMarch 11, 2016 at 4:14 PM

stat image ESPN recently published an analysis of the legal fees generated by lawyers working on the idiotic controversy surrounding allegedly deflated footballs known “Deflategate” (or “Ballghazi”). The scandal has been a Biglaw bonanza, with Paul, Weiss (for the NFL), Winston & Strawn and Gibson Dunn (for the Players Association), and Morgan Lewis (for the Patriots) all running up fat bills. ESPN estimates that total legal fees will amount to about $20 million.

Let’s give that number some context. History buffs might be familiar with the “Watergate” scandal. It was a big deal at the time. In fact, one might say it was the “Deflategate of the early 1970s.” (But rather than low-information voter Tom Brady as the saga’s chief villain, it featured a “hubris-crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream” named Richard Nixon.) According to this Associated Press report from 1975, legal costs for both the defendants and the special prosecutor’s office in the major Watergate trials totaled about $5 million. Adjusted for inflation, that’s approximately $22 million in 2016.

Perfect comparisons between different eras are impossible of course, but we can all take some comfort that the price of litigating matters of vital national and societal import has remained roughly constant over time.