Lawyers' Man of the Hour

By Annys Shin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 21, 2005

There is inflation. And then, there is what happened this year.

In June, the nation's average price of a house rose to a record $268,000.

In September, after the Gulf Coast hurricanes, the price of a gallon of gas soared past $3.

And earlier this month, a survey reported the top hourly rate for a lawyer had edged into the four digits for the first time, reaching $1,000.

Last week, the National Law Journal identified Benjamin R. Civiletti, a U.S. attorney general under President Jimmy Carter and chairman of the District-based Venable law firm, as the priciest lawyer in America. Civiletti, who specializes in litigation, antitrust law and white-collar defense, topped the National Law Journal's 16th annual survey of hourly rates at more than 100 of the country's top law firms.

A thousand dollars an hour doesn't catapult Civiletti, 70, into the ranks of marquee moneymakers such as rapper 50 Cent, who recently took home $500,000 for performing at a bat mitzvah, or Redskins receiver Clinton Portis, who earns almost $400,000 per game.

But in a little over a week, Civiletti is capable of taking in what the average American makes in one year. And if he charged $1,000 for all 1,800 hours he puts in during a year, he would make eight times what he earned as attorney general in 1979, or about $212,379 in today's dollars.

Civiletti cruised past the survey's previous record of $875 an hour to a rate that is hundreds of dollars higher than senior partners at some of Washington's and New York's largest law firms, according to the National Law Journal.

Though other lawyers may have reached $1,000 without reporting it, Civiletti's rate is "far higher than any rate I've ever heard," said John C. Coffee Jr., a former corporate lawyer in New York who is now a law professor at Columbia University.

"I was slightly surprised. . . . I suppose somebody had to crack that barrier," said R. Charles Miller, administrative partner in the Washington office of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, which employs another former U.S. attorney general: Dick Thornburgh. Block said the firm hasn't finalized rates for 2006 yet but said Thornburgh's "will not be that high."

One partner at Patton Boggs LLP, the second-priciest Washington firm after Venable in the survey, charges up to $800 an hour. At Hogan & Hartson, the rate goes up to $750 a hour. Twelve partners at Covington & Burling, the District firm with the fourth-highest rate, charge up to $720 an hour.

More typical for partners in Washington firms is about $500 an hour, said Steve Nelson, managing principal for law and government for the McCormick Group, an executive search firm based in Arlington. The average for partners in large New York firms ranges from about $700 to $800, Nelson said.

Nelson and other compensation experts point out that what a lawyer charges per hour isn't the same as what the lawyer takes home. After the firm pays its bills, the partners split what's left. They may also collect bonuses and contingency fees. Civiletti's rate doesn't come close to making him one of the nation's highest-paid lawyers.

Trial attorneys can win multibillion-dollar verdicts and earn fees that break down into more than $1,000 an hour, said Coffee. And a firm working on a merger may charge its client a percentage of a deal instead of billing by the hour.

The lawyers who successfully sued tobacco companies in 1998, for example, raked in billions of dollars in fees. Not long after, the marriage of Time Warner and America Online Inc. netted $35 million for New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, which represented Time Warner.

"If you calculate the rates in those situations, they make Civiletti's rate look cheap," said Stuart Pape, managing partner for Patton Boggs.

For those reasons, Civiletti dismisses the notion that he's reached any sort of milestone.

"The figure is meaningless," he said of his rate.

But hourly rates are the starting point of conversations with clients about what they will pay, compensation experts said. And they serve as benchmarks for the industry.

"These things do have an effect of dragging up the market. Everybody feels liberated to raise rates. They may not raise it to $1,000, but maybe by $50," Coffee said.

London barristers have already helped make their U.S. counterparts richer. Many companies have become used to paying rates of upward of $1,000 an hour, because of unfavorable exchange rates, said Ward Bower, principal of Altman Weil Inc., a legal management consulting firm in Philadelphia. "Six hundred pounds an hour times a buck seventy-five gets you past $1,000," he said.

Nelson and managing partners of several local firms countered that Civiletti was not likely to spark a race to the top.

"This is a special case for him," Nelson said.

"There are very few Ben Civilettis around," Miller said.

Civiletti's peers at Venable seem to agree. A committee at Venable determined his rate in consultation with managers and with clients, said Managing Partner James Shea.

"I had little to do with it," Civiletti said.

Still, he ventured a guess that the hike was based on "seniority," "the nature of the specialized work" that he does and possibly his "efficiency."

Civiletti, who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and represented clients such as the French government, picks his projects with care and often "dips" into other cases when needed, he said. Civiletti, who also does pro bono work, estimated that he puts in about 1,800 hours a year, far less than the 2,400 he used to work.

He focuses his energy mainly on strategy and supervising associates and paralegals, who do the heavy lifting.

"We have soldiers to do soldiers' work, majors to do majors' work and generals to do generals' work," he said.