Sidley Austin Charges $1100 Per Hour in Tribune Bankruptcy

Sidley Austin lawyers are asking as much as $1,100 an hour for bankruptcy work on Tribune Company, surpassing the rates charged by Weil, Gotshal & Manges in the Lehman Brothers case.

Tribune, the Chicago-based newspaper publisher, filed for bankruptcy on December 8th.

The company sought court approval to pay Sidley’s bankruptcy group $575 to $1,100 an hour for partners, $400 to $875 an hour for counsel and senior counsel, $240 to $650 an hour for associates, and $95 to $385 an hour for paraprofessionals.

“That’s the highest hourly rate I have seen or heard of for a bankruptcy lawyer,” said Lynn LoPucki, professor of bankruptcy law at the University of California Los Angeles.

Weil Gotshal partners charge $650 to $950 an hour on Lehman, which filed the biggest bankruptcy in history September 15th with $613 billion in debt.

In the year before its bankruptcy, Tribune paid Sidley almost $3 million in fees, plus $52,000 in expenses for restructuring work and preparation of filings. Those sums were taken out of advance retainers of $4.5 million.

Via Bloomberg.

• Cha Ching! Weil Gotshal Earning Big Money in Lehman Case
• Profits Up at Weil Gotshal
• “Avalanche” of Chapter 11 Filings Means Attorney Work for Years to Come
• Weil, Gotshal & Manges Advises MF Global UK Ltd. on First Filing of Special Administration Regime Application
• Morning Roundup

Posted by Erik Even on December 30, 2008. Filed under Law Firm News,Legal News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry