Chrysler Bankruptcy Lawyers' Bill: $12.7 Million

As we told you in one of our past coverages of both Chrysler's and GM's bankruptcies, there is no better job to have in time of crisis that that of a lawyer. A bankruptcy lawyer... And, despite the fact they are supposed to represent a bankrupt party (in our case Chrysler), the lawyers have no problem in billing millions for their services.

According to court filing, Chrysler has to pay, for its first month into bankruptcy, no less than, pay attention!, $12.4 million in fees and only $256,000 in expenses. The law firm who represented Chrysler is Jones Day, who worked together with 72 other partners, led by Corinne Ball. In all, 193 lawyers worked on Chrysler's bankruptcy, Autonews reported.

The lead bankruptcy attorney, Corinne Ball, who worked on the case an average of 15 hours a day, billed Chrysler for $900/hour. In all, she will get $401,310 for her work. The lesser lawyers billed 476.96 per hour, while paralegals and support staff billed at $224.23 per hour, according to the filing.

The bill includes expenses such as:

• copying documents: $52,628.32
• hotels: $62,400.20
• food and beverages: $5,878.76
• taxi charges: $4,247.42

As you can see, the lawyers spent for traveling by taxi just about as much as they did for food and drinks. The hotel bill is roughly the same as the one for copying documents...

In all, the 193 lawyers worked a total of 27,209 hours in one month. That's the equivalent of 1,133 days or, if you'd like, a little over three years.
What did we learn from this?

Being a lawyer...priceless.