Weil Gotshal tops list of earners as Lehman bankruptcy fees near $200m

The sum total of legal fees for work relating to the collapse of Lehman Brothers is rapidly approaching $200m, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records.

The ten law firms (plus an individual lawyer in the UK) involved in Lehman's Chapter 11 case have billed the Lehman estate a total of $178.8m (£110m) since the company filed for bankruptcy on 15 September last year.

The biggest biller is Lehman's lead bankruptcy counsel at Weil Gotshal & Manges, which has billed the estate nearly $99m (£60m). However, Weil's total billings are likely to increase further, as the firm has already submitted fee applications covering that amount in August and those applications only covered work done up to 31 May.

Other big billers include: Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCoy, counsel to the creditors committee, which has billed $29m (£18m); Jenner & Block, which is leading an examination of Lehman's collapse and has billed $17m (£10m); and Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle, Lehman's special conflicts counsel, which has billed $10m (£6m).

Jones Day, which is serving as special counsel, has billed $7.7m (£4.7m) so far, but that is also likely to increase, as the firm is representing Lehman in a special subset of litigation related to last year's sale of Lehman's brokerage assets and some real estate to Barclays for $1.5bn (£920m).

Lehman wants Judge James Peck to change the terms of the sale after accusing Barclays of netting an unfair $8.2bn (£5bn) windfall because of last-minute changes to the deal allegedly engineered by high-level executives on both sides. On Thursday (15 October), Jones Day filed hundreds of pages of paperwork for a status hearing on the matter.

Boies Schiller & Flexner is advising Barclays, and Hamish Hume, a Boies lawyer working on the case, told Judge Peck that Lehman still owes Barclays $3bn (£1.8bn) in assets that were supposed to be part of the deal.

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