Apple Doesn’t Want to Pay the Feds’ E-Book Lawyer $70,000 a Week

76 点作者 TinyBig超过 11 年前

16 条评论

The $70k / week figure given is for the first two weeks. I'm going to jump to a conclusion and say that the first two weeks will be above average in cost due to introductory meetings, posturing on both sides, and generally bringing the process up to speed.The $1,100 / hour is not out of line for a top law firm. It would be interesting to know what Apple is paying it's outside attorneys. The claim that the figure is "higher than Apple has ever encountered for any task" is clearly untrue. Apple has payed it's own executives much more in the past.

评论 #6824843 未加载

评论 #6824201 未加载

rayiner超过 11 年前

This article provides more context: <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20131017/apple-gets-its-e-book-antitrust-monitor" rel="nofollow">http://allthingsd.com/20131017/apple-gets-its-e-book-antitru...</a>"Together, Bromwich and Nigro will oversee Apple’s internal antitrust compliance policies and employee training on them for the next two years."$1,100 an hour is not an unusually high fee for internal investigations work, nor does $70,000 per week seem unusually high for an ongoing compliance investigation and policy restructuring of an organization as large as Apple. This sort of work usually involves getting down into the weeds and looking at how even fairly low-level employees go about their jobs. The going rate for this sort of work tends to be pretty high, because companies who hire law firm to do an internal investigation tend to be in a pretty tight spot.

评论 #6824224 未加载

carbocation超过 11 年前

If Apple were forced to pay the State $70,000 per week, I don't think this would be an issue. I do find it uncomfortable that the State is forcing Apple to transfer wealth to another private party without any (obvious) oversight.

评论 #6824152 未加载

评论 #6825281 未加载

joshuamerrill超过 11 年前

Is it worth mentioning that on top of the $1,100 hourly rate for Bromwich, and the $1,025 hourly rate for the assisting law firm, Fried Frank, he's also demanding a 15% "service charge"? From page 23:"And Mr. Bromwich’s rates in this matter dramatically exceed what he has quoted in the past. For instance, in a proposal to monitor the New Orleans Police Department five months ago, he suggested a $495 hourly rate, without an administrative fee, which the Department of Justice termed 'relatively expensive.'"

vonskippy超过 11 年前

How awful, Apple breaks the law and then whines about the pocket change ($70K x 52wks x 2years = $7.3M) charge for enforcing it's own compliance.If Apple thinks $70K/week is high for lawyers, wait until they get the overage bills from their new HQ building contractors.

DanBC超过 11 年前

> Bromwich’s bill for his five-person team’s first two weeks of work: $138,432To be fair, that's only $27,686 each per fortnight. Assuming 50 hour work weeks, that's only $276 per hour.As always, check my arithmetic.138432 / 5 people = 27686.27686 / 100 hours = 276.That's not far off a run of the mill family lawyer in England. (Without barristers and court fees.)

评论 #6824271 未加载

评论 #6824425 未加载

评论 #6824273 未加载

DannyBee超过 11 年前

Usually in these situations, lawyers give high rates expecting the judge to knock it down. Judges always (rightly or wrongly) think lawyers are being paid too much, and often just halve the rate or whatever. This is often true regardless of what number is given.So if you don't want to end up being ordered by a court to work at 25% of your actual market rate, you often have to give exorbitant numbers.

MaysonL超过 11 年前

The price Mr. Bromwich is demanding is a sideshow. The real objection Apple has is that what he demands, and the judge proposes to give him, is not within her power to grant. All that a special master is allowed to do is what the court is allowed to do, and what the parties consent to. Apple isn't consenting to anything beyond its legal obligations. It is not in the judge's power to interview witnesses alone, without their counsel present if desired. Apple's main complaint is that Bromwich is trying to act as a prosecutor, rather than as a representative of, or substitute for, the judge

linuxhansl超过 11 年前

> "it doesn’t matter if you think my fees are reasonable, because you don’t get to negotiate them: You just pay them"Nice. Spoken like a true lawyer.How did legal fees get so high anyway? Do lawyers perform a task more skillfull than (say) software engineers? It seems under $350/h a lawyer won't move a finger. Software engineers do not (typically) make $350/h.Also it looks like high lawyer fees are at least partially a US phenomenon.

freehunter超过 11 年前

Does all of that $1100/hr go to Bromwich, or is it payed to the federal government (or the company that pays Bromwich) who then pays Bromwich some percentage of that? We've had contracts at work for $80,000/yr where the contractor only saw $50,000 of that. The rest was payed to the company he worked for.If the entire sum isn't going to Bromwich or if the court agrees with the price he's charging, I'd chalk it up to being the price you pay for anti-trust behavior. Then again, I don't know how much a company should pay for compliance monitoring after being convicted of anti-trust behavior. Either way it is a lot of money, but if it's not all going to Bromwich's pockets, it sounds like a fine being imposed for the duration of the anti-trust monitoring.

评论 #6824284 未加载

victorbstan超过 11 年前

I'm sorry, I don't see how anyone should be defending a lawyer's fees at that price. I look at law the way I look at open source software, (the law should be accessible to everyone, for free, if they know how to interpret it). You can hire experts in law, as you hire experts in open source software (lawyers/programmers). Now imagine, for example, two startups competing with on the same technology (say Rails (whatever)) in the same market (whatever). Now imagine one of the two startups wins a dominant market position and the other has to fold. You don't imagine the developers of the winning startup demanding some arbitrary fee from the company they beat. It would seem absurd. Yet here are people defending thousands of dollars an hour, for a human being to interpret the law, which is the same for everyone and should be accessible to anyone (even though we all know navigating the legal system is probably worse than navigating through WordPress source code). I don't see how a lawyer on the opposing team should be able to charge me an arbitrary amount.

RexRollman超过 11 年前

Although I supported the anti-trust action taken against Apple, I have to say that agree with them in regards to these ridiculous charges.

评论 #6824122 未加载

x0054超过 11 年前

So, Apple has to pay Bromwhich $1,265/hr ($1,100/hr + 15%) to oversee the antitrust compliance and then, additional $1025/hr to the outside counsel who would consult Bromwhich on the relevant Antitrust law.All this because Bromwhich admits that he has NO antitrust experience. So, why was he chosen in the first place?!?!Say I show up at your firm, get hired as a senior C++ developer. Then on the first day I show up, and tell you: "You know how you are paying me $X/hour to do this job. Yeah... You know, I don't actually know how to do this job, but John here does. He's going to be working "with" me. So, in addition to $X/hour for me, you'll need to pay John here $X/hour as well. Yeah..., so will get started now, right?"

kevrone超过 11 年前

I really don't care about Apple's problems. Apple can take care of itself.

评论 #6825106 未加载

smackfu超过 11 年前

Wonder how much Apple paid their lawyers to write this brief and if they actually come out ahead even if they win.

caycep超过 11 年前

Honestly, I don't think Apple so much as broke the law as they lost out on some lobbying/regulating play where Amazon got the DoJ to investigate for agency models, as opposed to Apple getting the DoJ to investigate Amazon for predatory pricing.In this case, I think anything is fair play.