5 ms·

The cost bill filed by Google underscores the intensity of this case and shows that we caught only surface glimpses of what surely were day-to-day firefights ke

by grellas 14y ago

The cost bill filed by Google underscores the intensity of this case and shows that we caught only surface glimpses of what surely were day-to-day firefights keeping the lawyers and their minions going round-the-clock for an intense year's worth of fighting. A "cost bill" is not a bill for the attorneys' fees incurred in a case. Under U.S. rules, the parties bear their own legal fees in most cases (and that is the case here). But federal court rules do permit a prevailing party to recover from the losing party necessary costs incurred in dealing with document production and similar matters in the litigation. The out-of-pocket bill here (not including attorneys' fees) for Google to filter through 97 million documents and to produce just over 3 million of them after careful assessment and screening: about $2.9 million (mostly paid to electronic discovery service providers, who surely found full-time employment in this case during this past year). The bulk of the remaining bill for costs consists of nearly $1 million paid to expert witnesses for their assistance in helping to prepare and present Google's case. In a case like this, Google's attorneys' fees had to run at least $10 million per month, at least during the intense phases of the case. I would estimate, then, that total attorneys' fees in the case easily exceeded $100 million and may well have done so for Google alone. Big Law may be in the doldrums today in general but a case like this clearly offers a big payday. The law firms here were all exemplary and undoubtedly earned it. Still, the cost is staggering to contemplate for the casual outside observer.

cookiecaper 14y ago
They did not earn it. Lawyers charge exorbitant prices because they can -- they have you by the balls, and you don't really have an option not to pay them -- not because their services are actually worth $100 million+. I've admired your posts for years here on HN, but it's not just staggering to a "casual observer"; it's staggering to anyone with a sense of decency and propriety.
- Cushman 14y ago
  Out of curiosity, how much would you bid to reproduce some tens of millions of pages of documents in such a way that you would be willing to testify before a judge that every single one was true and accurate? (Considering that the judge will not take your word for it, how much should you set aside to pay someone else to go through it all and check your work?)
  - giardini 14y ago
    Are you implying that someone actually "went through it all and checked the work"?
    - Cushman 14y ago
      Are you implying that Google spent three million dollars sending an intern down to Kinko's with a truck full of file boxes?
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    As grellas clarified, only the $4 million requested went to document production. Lawyers fees have not been disclosed but likely exceeded $100 million. That's the contentious figure. $1-$2 per document is probably not totally unreasonable, but then I don't really know what goes into these things. Also, in my uneducated opinion, I think "millions" of documents is probably not really credible in terms of what a normal person thinks of as a document. This may include the entirety of Android's source code, which is thousands of files ("documents") by itself. I'd like to be corrected on this if there is actually a real amount of work for each of those "millions" of documents entered into the case. (If there were millions of unique and independent documents for review, I don't think anyone would believe a court could truly process these in a timeframe of 18-24 months.)
    - Cushman 14y ago
      From the filing: "Google delivered to its document vendor over 97 million documents for electronic processing and review. ... Google’s document vendor filtered custodial documents for production by running agreed-upon key-term searches, and converted documents to TIFF images for production. Over the course of this litigation, Oracle served nine separate Requests for Production of Documents, with 204 individual document requests. Google electronically produced over 3.3 million documents in response to Oracle’s requests, and Google’s 60 separate document productions span over 20 million pages." I suppose you can debate the exact figures if you like, but they did spend $2,900,349 on this, and I'm betting they got a good deal.
- noonespecial 14y ago
  Lawyers may have Joe Ordinary "by the balls" in his divorce case, but I'm quite sure that no one has Google by the oo's. When it comes to law, scale makes a quantitative difference. A case this size is 100% politics and its manipulating the precedents for an entire country. Its damn near diplomacy. "Big Law" is suffering these days. Law firms lined up for this one by the trainload, Google picked the best of the best and paid what they thought it was worth to them.
- taligent 14y ago
  What a hypocritical remark. Someone with decency and proprietary does not call into question an entire profession of people. The law profession attracts a lot of extremely intelligent and honorable people. Unfortunately like any profession the bad ones tend to make the most noise. I sure as hell can't imagine many people with the intellectual rigor capable of turning the staggering volume of documents into a single, compelling argument.
- pg 14y ago
  The high rates that top lawyers get paid are simply market rates. We pay them too. Cheap lawyers are not a bargain. Decency and propriety? What do you even mean by that? That you think the proper rate for legal work should be lower than the current market rate? What basis do you have for such a claim?
  - coderdude 14y ago
    To the casual observer it seems the same as when you pay a hair under $5/gallon at the gas pump in California. (Way too much.) I'd imagine that is his basis. I doubt anyone walks away saying "man, I totally just paid my lawyer a fair amount for his services."
    - DanWaterworth 14y ago
      If you think $5/gallon is a lot then you've obviously never visited the UK where it's currently about $8.50/gallon.
      - coderdude 14y ago
        I made sure to note the location because I'm aware that in the UK you guys have a bunch of taxes shoved into the price of your gas. We don't. We're paying all those lovely taxes and the expensive gas prices. Maybe it comes out to being about the same? I don't really know that answer. But the gas companies are reporting "record profits" while we're paying $50-$80 to fill our tanks each time (in California). I'm just using this to illustrate most people's perception of what they pay lawyers -- way too much.
      - Domenic_S 14y ago
        And the UK has how many more miles/kms of roads than the US, again?
        onetwothreefour 14y ago
        And that's relevant because?
- djloche 14y ago
  "They did not earn it. _______ charge exorbitant prices because they can -- they have you by the balls, and you don't really have an option not to pay them -- not because their services are actually worth ______." I've heard this sort of statement from just about anyone looking from the outside into any other profession. Developers, Photographers, Architects, Plumbers, Lawyers whoever don't actually earn their rates. Their services aren't actually worth $$$. They charge exorbitant prices because they can. Sorry - it's all hogwash. Someone's services are worth something to you, otherwise you wouldn't be paying them. It's a business decision. You can pay to have your car fixed so you can get to work, you can pay to get your stove fixed so you can cook, you can pay to have your toilet fixed so your feces go to the sewage treatment plant instead of spewing all over your floor, you can pay to have a building designed so you can build it or live in it, you can pay for a non-stop flight so you can be there in time for the meeting with PG, and so on. Google made $2.89B profit on $10.645B revenue in their most recently reported quarter. An additional $14M in legal expenses per quarter is no doubt far less than they normally spend on a regular basis for legal. In fact, Google has no less than 70 openings for legal positions posted on their website. ~$4.5M a month in legal fees is an extraordinary sum to the average HN commenter (including me), it is not an extraordinary sum for a company the size of google, but merely a regular cost of doing business.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
nopinsight 14y ago
I believe the loser of a court case, especially if they are the initiator, should foot the legal bills for both sides. At least this will offer small parties who are attacked by predatory lawsuit from a large party a fighting chance (with obvious risks), especially when the case is not warranted. Why is this not implemented in US law?
- protomyth 14y ago
  One reason it is not implemented is that it would stop most poor people from suing insurance companies. They have very deep pockets and the bill would be excessive, so the cost of trying to right a wrong would scare off most attorneys that would take the case. Polluters is another class of case that generally fits into this. Tort reform is needed, but automatic loser pay works to the advantage of big companies.
- sgift 14y ago
  Looser pays always sounds good in theory and is hell in practice. We have it in Germany (IANAL and there are exceptions and so on) and the result is that companies can do almost anything without getting sued. The risk of paying the whole case is too high for individuals.

by grellas 14y ago

cookiecaper 14y ago

They did not earn it. Lawyers charge exorbitant prices because they can -- they have you by the balls, and you don't really have an option not to pay them -- not because their services are actually worth $100 million+. I've admired your posts for years here on HN, but it's not just staggering to a "casual observer"; it's staggering to anyone with a sense of decency and propriety.

Cushman 14y ago
Out of curiosity, how much would you bid to reproduce some tens of millions of pages of documents in such a way that you would be willing to testify before a judge that every single one was true and accurate? (Considering that the judge will not take your word for it, how much should you set aside to pay someone else to go through it all and check your work?)
- giardini 14y ago
  Are you implying that someone actually "went through it all and checked the work"?
  - Cushman 14y ago
    Are you implying that Google spent three million dollars sending an intern down to Kinko's with a truck full of file boxes?
- cookiecaper 14y ago
  As grellas clarified, only the $4 million requested went to document production. Lawyers fees have not been disclosed but likely exceeded $100 million. That's the contentious figure. $1-$2 per document is probably not totally unreasonable, but then I don't really know what goes into these things. Also, in my uneducated opinion, I think "millions" of documents is probably not really credible in terms of what a normal person thinks of as a document. This may include the entirety of Android's source code, which is thousands of files ("documents") by itself. I'd like to be corrected on this if there is actually a real amount of work for each of those "millions" of documents entered into the case. (If there were millions of unique and independent documents for review, I don't think anyone would believe a court could truly process these in a timeframe of 18-24 months.)
  - Cushman 14y ago
    From the filing: "Google delivered to its document vendor over 97 million documents for electronic processing and review. ... Google’s document vendor filtered custodial documents for production by running agreed-upon key-term searches, and converted documents to TIFF images for production. Over the course of this litigation, Oracle served nine separate Requests for Production of Documents, with 204 individual document requests. Google electronically produced over 3.3 million documents in response to Oracle’s requests, and Google’s 60 separate document productions span over 20 million pages." I suppose you can debate the exact figures if you like, but they did spend $2,900,349 on this, and I'm betting they got a good deal.
noonespecial 14y ago
Lawyers may have Joe Ordinary "by the balls" in his divorce case, but I'm quite sure that no one has Google by the oo's. When it comes to law, scale makes a quantitative difference. A case this size is 100% politics and its manipulating the precedents for an entire country. Its damn near diplomacy. "Big Law" is suffering these days. Law firms lined up for this one by the trainload, Google picked the best of the best and paid what they thought it was worth to them.
taligent 14y ago
What a hypocritical remark. Someone with decency and proprietary does not call into question an entire profession of people. The law profession attracts a lot of extremely intelligent and honorable people. Unfortunately like any profession the bad ones tend to make the most noise. I sure as hell can't imagine many people with the intellectual rigor capable of turning the staggering volume of documents into a single, compelling argument.
pg 14y ago
The high rates that top lawyers get paid are simply market rates. We pay them too. Cheap lawyers are not a bargain. Decency and propriety? What do you even mean by that? That you think the proper rate for legal work should be lower than the current market rate? What basis do you have for such a claim?
- coderdude 14y ago
  To the casual observer it seems the same as when you pay a hair under $5/gallon at the gas pump in California. (Way too much.) I'd imagine that is his basis. I doubt anyone walks away saying "man, I totally just paid my lawyer a fair amount for his services."
  - DanWaterworth 14y ago
    If you think $5/gallon is a lot then you've obviously never visited the UK where it's currently about $8.50/gallon.
    - coderdude 14y ago
      I made sure to note the location because I'm aware that in the UK you guys have a bunch of taxes shoved into the price of your gas. We don't. We're paying all those lovely taxes and the expensive gas prices. Maybe it comes out to being about the same? I don't really know that answer. But the gas companies are reporting "record profits" while we're paying $50-$80 to fill our tanks each time (in California). I'm just using this to illustrate most people's perception of what they pay lawyers -- way too much.
    - Domenic_S 14y ago
      And the UK has how many more miles/kms of roads than the US, again?
      - onetwothreefour 14y ago
        And that's relevant because?
djloche 14y ago
"They did not earn it. _______ charge exorbitant prices because they can -- they have you by the balls, and you don't really have an option not to pay them -- not because their services are actually worth ______." I've heard this sort of statement from just about anyone looking from the outside into any other profession. Developers, Photographers, Architects, Plumbers, Lawyers whoever don't actually earn their rates. Their services aren't actually worth $$$. They charge exorbitant prices because they can. Sorry - it's all hogwash. Someone's services are worth something to you, otherwise you wouldn't be paying them. It's a business decision. You can pay to have your car fixed so you can get to work, you can pay to get your stove fixed so you can cook, you can pay to have your toilet fixed so your feces go to the sewage treatment plant instead of spewing all over your floor, you can pay to have a building designed so you can build it or live in it, you can pay for a non-stop flight so you can be there in time for the meeting with PG, and so on. Google made $2.89B profit on $10.645B revenue in their most recently reported quarter. An additional $14M in legal expenses per quarter is no doubt far less than they normally spend on a regular basis for legal. In fact, Google has no less than 70 openings for legal positions posted on their website. ~$4.5M a month in legal fees is an extraordinary sum to the average HN commenter (including me), it is not an extraordinary sum for a company the size of google, but merely a regular cost of doing business.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

nopinsight 14y ago

I believe the loser of a court case, especially if they are the initiator, should foot the legal bills for both sides. At least this will offer small parties who are attacked by predatory lawsuit from a large party a fighting chance (with obvious risks), especially when the case is not warranted. Why is this not implemented in US law?

protomyth 14y ago
One reason it is not implemented is that it would stop most poor people from suing insurance companies. They have very deep pockets and the bill would be excessive, so the cost of trying to right a wrong would scare off most attorneys that would take the case. Polluters is another class of case that generally fits into this. Tort reform is needed, but automatic loser pay works to the advantage of big companies.
sgift 14y ago
Looser pays always sounds good in theory and is hell in practice. We have it in Germany (IANAL and there are exceptions and so on) and the result is that companies can do almost anything without getting sued. The risk of paying the whole case is too high for individuals.