Biglaw

Biglaw Firm Gets Benchslapped Over 'Astonishing' Fee Request

The judge has sticker shock.

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The good news for Latham & Watkins is that they were successful on the merits. Whether they’re able to recover legal fees from the plaintiff in what the firm terms vexatious litigation remains to be seen.

Latham represents the defense in a pair of cases, now dismissed, brought by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen against an employee of his investment fund, Shawn Cox. The complaint alleged Cox recorded conversations with Christensen in violation of Massachusetts law. Only problem? The plaintiff never claimed he was in Massachusetts at the time of the alleged wiretap — which is an essential element.

Now that the case has been dispensed with, defense counsel, led by Latham attorney Steven Pacini, requested legal fees of $60,000.

“The fee request is aggressive beyond any convention,” [Superior Court Judge Mitchell H. Kaplan] said in court. “The fee request is astonishing.”

Actually, that’s about the going rate for a week of Biglaw work.

And that was precisely Pacini’s justification, saying the fee request in this case was the same they charge other clients, and actually the Latham team was pretty efficient:

“To whip something up in respect to these guys [Christensen’s counsel] in less than 10 hours, I think, was efficient,” Pacini said. “They forced us to look into and respond to all of this misunderstanding of Massachusetts law, and that’s where the hours were spent.”

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But, as reported by Law360, Judge Kaplan couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around the cost of litigation when the complaint was so deficient:

“[Massachusetts General Laws] Chapter 231.6F is designed to deal with frivolous litigation because frivolous litigation tends to be the most expensive to deal with,” Pacini said in court.

“It doesn’t say anything about frivolous litigation being the most expensive to deal with,” Judge Kaplan responded. “The most expensive to deal with is hard-fought litigation over serious issues with complicated matters of fact and law, none of which is apparent here.”

“I agree there’s not, but the plaintiff has tried to make it—” Pacini said before the judge cut him off.

“So you have no justification,” Judge Kaplan said.

The judge chided Latham for charging thousands of dollars “to file a brief that a first-year law student could write.”

With all respect to the judge, a first-year law student can’t read a single case in 10 hours, let alone write a brief.

Pacini seems to understand the judge’s frustration stems, not from the firm per se, but from the effort required to deal with a baseless claim:

“I think, Judge Kaplan, he sees clearly the plaintiffs have no case here and it shouldn’t take any work to point that out,” Pacini told Law360 after the hearing. “But we had to explain that; we had to analyze what they were saying to show how they were misconstruing the law.”

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Kaplan has yet to make a determination about the award, but it looks from from a slam dunk for the defense.

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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