At least some people are cashing in on the collapse of the banking
system. The doyen of bankruptcy attorneys, Weil, Gotshal & Manges
LLP's Harvey Miller, is among the law firm's partners making $950 per
hour for their labors as debtor counsel for Lehman Brothers Holdings
Inc., the nation's fourth-largest investment bank at the time of its
spectacular flameout.
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Miller's been around since before the cataclysmic change in the federal
bankruptcy code in 1978. Up until then, bankruptcy lawyers got no
respect. The thinking was, if a company is bankrupt, there was little
money for legal fees. Not surprisingly, lawyers gravitated to better
paying work.
The 1978 reform legislation changed that, adding things
such as protections for debtor-in-possession financing and giving
lawyers and other professionals their due for working on cases. Hourly
legal fees have risen ever since.
Miller built Weil's bankruptcy
team from scratch, making it a debtor counsel powerhouse. The firm
first started doing work for Lehman in 1974.
The benefit of that
long working relationship is that Weil got the call to handle Lehman's
bankruptcy, and has already billed the firm $51.83 million for legal
work for the year prior to its Sept. 15 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court
for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
Miller, 75,
isn't alone on the case. Others from Weil helping out include Richard
Krasnow, Lori Fife, Shai Waisman and Jacqueline Marcus. But he's still
the main guy. And being back in the courtroom -- he went to work for
Greenhill & Co. for a few years as an investment banker before
coming back to Weil -- definitely agrees with him. He still wears his
finely tailored suits well and walks with a bounce in his step.
It's
no coincidence, either, that Weil continues to ride high. In fact, its
client list is so large and varied that only a handful of them -- General
Electric Capital Corp. (3.30%), Citigroup Inc. (1.48%), Reuters
(1.14%), Merrill Lynch & Co. (1.12%) and Credit Suisse Group (1.04%) -- account for
more than 1% of its revenue over the past year, the law firm said. - Terry Brennan
Terry Brennan is a senior writer covering bankruptcy for The Deal.
