https://nypost.com/2018/12/10/lawyers-slap-sears-with-5m-legal-bill-for-17-days-of-work/
Sears may be scrambling for cash, but its lawyers are making a mint.
The bankrupt retailer’s white-shoe law firm, Weil Gotshal & Manges, on Friday submitted its first bill in the Chapter 11 case: a whopping $5 million for 17 days of work.
In all, 80 attorneys and legal assistants billed Sears for 5,032 hours of labor, which amounts to about $312,000 a day, according to a Friday filing.
Particularly remarkable, he added, was that some 19 staffers who were either first-year lawyers or not yet admitted to the bar billed at hourly fees ranging as high as $920.
“What gives court fee examiners pause are the hourly rates of people who have no experience,” Snyder said.
Still, it was Weil Gotshal’s more-seasoned legal eagles — some 27 partners, with hourly rates ranging from $1,050 to $1,600 — that accounted for more than $2 million of the bill.
“The heavy reliance on partners is driving the fees up,” said bankruptcy attorney Stephen Selbst of Herrick Feinstein, who previously worked for Weil Gotshal. “But they must feel that they needed all those partners because this is a high-level crisis with a high level of complexity that the associates” are not up to.
Weil Gotshal and Sears didn’t respond to requests for comment.
By comparison, law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which represents Toys ‘R’ Us in its bankruptcy filed in September 2017, charged the toy retailer $6.5 million in its first bill, covering five weeks and 6,621 hours of labor.
The hefty fees for Sears will likely rankle its creditors, who went on record last month calling for the 125-year-old retailer to liquidate its stores entirely rather than keep it breathing as a smaller chain — which is what its chairman and largest shareholder, Eddie Lampert, is trying to do.
“The debtors are pursuing an unjustified and foolhardy gamble with other people’s money,” the group of creditors said in a court filing in November.
Lampert had no comment Monday.