[CWG-Stewardship] Legal cost reality

[Greg Shatan]

Alan,

I believe (but stand to be corrected) that Sidley's bill covered their work
with both the CWG and CCWG.  Their efforts on both fronts started in March
2015.  Also, Sidley's billing rates vary by attorney, rather than there
being just a single rate per hour for all attorneys.  (There are times when
law firms will agree to bill on a "blended rate" (i.e., all hours cost the
same regardless of the attorney) but it's a relatively uncommon practice.)

Greg

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 12:56 AM, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca>
wrote:

>  Actually Chuck, the Board motion was approval of the costs incurred
> through 31 March 2015, and Sidley Austin was only engaged on 6 March. So
> that appears to be the charge for the first 3 weeks or so.
>
> My recollection is that they are billing a bit under $1000 per hour, so
> that would amount (in round numbers to 500 hours or 60 8-hour days in 25
> calendar days.
>
> Our Sidley legal team consists of several people, and presumably for the
> first week or so, many of them were "catching up", which presumably
> accounts for a fair part of this. Then, Holly and Sharon were in Istanbul
> for several days.
>
> Overall, pretty high, but I am guessing the remaining months had a lower
> per-month rate.
>
> Alan
>
> At 25/06/2015 05:55 PM, Gomes, Chuck wrote
>
> Sean,
>
> 500k to date not per month.
>
> Chuck
>
>
> Sent via the Samsung GALAXY S® 5, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com>
> Date:06/25/2015 5:42 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: James Gannon <james at cyberinvasion.net>
> Cc: cwg-stewardship at icann.org
> Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] Legal cost reality
>
> With due respect James, I am in no way belittling the work of legal
> council. I am rather wondering how we as a community recognising this huge
> cost did not better strategize on how/when to engage external council. The
> amount that has been spent on all participants of the ccwg and cwg(for
> remote/physical meetings) would seem to be competing with the total cost of
> legal advice (perhaps legal would even be more).
>
> The deed has been done and we can't rewrite history. My comment is
> targeted more on the fact that we need to think of how we engage legal more
> efficiently going forward.
>
> For the record, when Greg said top notch council are expensive, 500k
> monthly is just beyond my imagination!
>
> Regards
>
> sent from Google nexus 4
> kindly excuse brevity and typos.
> On 25 Jun 2015 18:23, "James Gannon" <james at cyberinvasion.net > wrote:
>  Our legal advice has been critical to our process and Sidley have been
> crucial to our successes.
> I think we should be thanking them for their service, and yes top notch
> legal services are not cheap.
> It is most certainly something that I have no issue with the community
> exercising its prudence over however lets not limit ourselves in any way to
> engage with our counsel.
>
> -James
>
> From: < cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Seun Ojedeji
> Date: Thursday 25 June 2015 18:15
> To: " cwg-stewardship at icann.org"
> Subject: [CWG-Stewardship] Legal cost reality
>
> Hi,
>
> I hope those who want to always push issues to external legal advice would
> appreciate the need to be strategic and prudent about this. Over 500,000USD
> already spent on Sidley is definitely not what we like ICANN to keep
> spending it's resources on.
>
> Regards
>
> sent from Google nexus 4
> kindly excuse brevity and typos.
>
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