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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 -- no

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.
    - cookiecaper 14y ago
      As I stated, I'm not discussing document processing rates in my original comment. I don't contend that this is exorbitant. I also still don't believe your snippet is a sufficient basis upon which to accept there were really millions of documents in the sense of what most people would consider "documents".
  - taligent 14y ago
    No one does believe that a court would review every document ever read by anyone associated with the case. That is the job of the law firm who would distill the thousands/millions of documents into a single argument for the court. Some documents maybe relevant. Some may not. The point is that it takes someone with skill a great deal of time to review them.
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
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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.
  - cookiecaper 14y ago
    As I stated, I'm not discussing document processing rates in my original comment. I don't contend that this is exorbitant. I also still don't believe your snippet is a sufficient basis upon which to accept there were really millions of documents in the sense of what most people would consider "documents".
- taligent 14y ago
  No one does believe that a court would review every document ever read by anyone associated with the case. That is the job of the law firm who would distill the thousands/millions of documents into a single argument for the court. Some documents maybe relevant. Some may not. The point is that it takes someone with skill a great deal of time to review them.

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

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