Legal Fee Tracker: Lawyer's 4,000 hours help Sullivan & Cromwell reach $200 mln mark in FTX case
By David Thomas
June 27 (Reuters) -Even for a busy lawyer at a big corporate law firm, billing close to 11 hours a day on a single case, five days a week for 18 months straight is no easy feat.
That's the average pace Brian Glueckstein has kept up as one of the lead lawyers in the FTX bankruptcy since it began in November 2022, according to court records though April. All those hours — including 342 in December 2022 alone — have helped his law firm Sullivan & Cromwell amass close to $200 million in billings as debtor's counsel in the sprawling case so far.
Sullivan & Cromwell's fee filings illustrate the massive, lucrative task of managing the bankruptcy of a cryptocurrency exchange whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for committing one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.
A Delaware bankruptcy judge has approved more than $171.8 million in fees for the New York-founded law firm, with another $26.8 million request pending.
Glueckstein, with a current hourly rate of $2,375, has billed more than 4,000 hours in the bankruptcy, the most of any partner at his firm, according to a Reuters analysis of monthly fee statements. He is one of hundreds of lawyers and staffers from 890-lawyer Sullivan & Cromwell who have billed more than 168,000 hours in the case altogether.
Glueckstein, who joined Sullivan & Cromwell out of New York University School of Law in 2003, did not respond to requests for comment.
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesperson referred Reuters to its public filings in the case and said that there have been no objections lodged against its fee requests.
As its bankruptcy counsel, Sullivan & Cromwell is advising FTX as it sells assets and pursues legal claims against others in an effort to repay creditors, including its customers.
An FTX spokesperson said the law firm's fees represent "a fraction of the amounts [FTX CEO] John Ray and his team have recovered through their investigation and prosecution of recovery actions."
FTX said this week that it has recovered up to $16 billion to repay customers, including over $12 billion in cash, and it says it will repay all customer claims in full.
Since May 2023, Glueckstein has also been part of a Sullivan & Cromwell team representing fire-protection company Kidde-Fenwal Inc, a Carrier Global subsidiary that filed for bankruptcy last year, billing at least 732 hours in the case. That's an average of about 12 hours a day on the two cases together, five days a week for 11 months.
A spokesperson for Carrier Global did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fee experts said such a workload for a single lawyer was extreme, but far from unheard of when juggling one or more high-stakes assignments. The intensity required from bankruptcy practitioners depends on the case, and FTX is a "bet-the-company engagement," said Nancy Rapoport, a fee examiner and law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Other experts noted that lawyers at large U.S. law firms often work eye-popping hours, with extreme workloads sometimes considered a badge of success.
"It brings to mind the adage that making partner is a pie-eating contest and the prize for winning is more pie," Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin said in an email.
Before FTX's collapse, Sullivan & Cromwell had served as an outside law firm for the company and Bankman-Fried. The firm has faced scrutiny and at least one lawsuit over its pre-bankruptcy work from investors who accused it of failing to stop Bankman-Fried's $8 billion fraud.
Sullivan & Cromwell has denied any wrongdoing, and a court-appointed examiner concluded last month that the firm was not complicit in the fraud that caused the cryptocurrency exchange to collapse.
- In other legal fee news, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a $667 million fee award for lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner, Hausfeld and other law firms that secured a $2.7 billion antitrust settlement with Blue Cross Blue Shield in 2020.
The fee award is among the largest ever in a class action.
- U.S. law firm Motley Rice on Monday appealed its award of $396 million for its work on litigation against the drug industry over the opioid crisis that resulted in $46 billion in nationwide settlements.
The firm did not say how much it was seeking or on what basis it was challenging the award.
(Legal Fee Tracker is a weekly feature exploring attorney compensation awards and disputes in class actions, bankruptcies and other matters. Please send tips or suggestions to D.Thomas@thomsonreuters.com .)
Reporting by David Thomas
Gerelateerde activa
Laatste nieuws
Disclaimer: De entiteiten van de XM Group bieden diensten en toegang tot ons online handelsplatform op basis van uitsluitend-uitvoering, waardoor een persoon de beschikbare content op of via de website kan bekijken en/of gebruiken, zonder dat dit is bedoeld voor wijziging of uitbreiding. Dergelijk(e) toegang en gebruik vallen onder: (i) de algemene voorwaarden; (ii) risicowaarschuwingen; en de (iii) volledige disclaimer. Dergelijke content wordt daarom alleen aangeboden als algemene informatie. Wees u er daarnaast vooral van bewust dat de inhoud op ons online handelsplatform geen verzoek of aanbieding omvat om transacties op de financiële markten uit te voeren. Het beleggen op welke financiële markt dan ook vormt een aanzienlijk risico voor uw vermogen.
Alle materialen die op ons online handelsplatform worden gepubliceerd zijn bedoeld voor educatieve/informatieve doeleinden en omvatten geen – en moeten niet worden beschouwd als het bevatten van – financieel, vermogensbelastings- of handelsadvies en aanbevelingen, of een overzicht van onze handelsprijzen, of een aanbod of aanvraag van een transactie in financiële instrumenten of ongevraagde financiële promoties voor u.
Alle content van derden, alsmede content die is voorbereid door XM, zoals opinies, nieuws, onderzoeken, analyses, prijzen en andere informatie of koppelingen naar externe websites op deze website worden aangeboden op een 'zoals-ze-zijn'-basis, als algemene marktcommentaren, en vormen geen beleggingsadvies. Voor zover dat content wordt beschouwd als beleggingsonderzoek, moet u zich ervan bewust zijn en accepteren dat de content niet bedoeld was en niet is voorbereid in overeenstemming met de wettelijke vereisten die zijn opgesteld om de onafhankelijkheid van beleggingsonderzoek te bevorderen en als zodanig onder de geldende wetgeving en richtlijnen moet worden beschouwd als marketingcommunicatie. Zorg ervoor dat u onze Mededeling over niet-onafhankelijk beleggingsonderzoek en risicowaarschuwing in verband met de voorgaande informatie doorneemt en begrijpt; die kunt u hier lezen.
