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Yet, in the world that we both live in there are plenty of reasonable scenarios for $1000/hr to be a reasonable fee. Anyone who makes north of 3 million dollars

by jonknee 13y ago

Yet, in the world that we both live in there are plenty of reasonable scenarios for $1000/hr to be a reasonable fee. Anyone who makes north of 3 million dollars a year probably makes more than $1000/hr. $1000/hr is on the high-end for a lawyer, but would be on the low end for something like a professional speaker (or athlete, coach, CEO, hedge fund manager, or many other jobs). Since Apple is the one complaining here, let's look at what they would consider fair pay. Tim Cook got $4.2M in pay last year (which at a very respectable 2,500 hours billed for an attorney would be $1,680 an hour). Sounds exorbitant in Apple's words, but it's mere pocket change to the 1 million shares of AAPL he got in 2011 for getting the CEO gig--currently worth a cool $556m. If you want to average across the full 10 year vesting period at the same 2,500 hours a year it still comes out to an awesome $22,240 an hour. That's not completely fair because it doesn't include the $50M or so he'll make during the 10 year period and it's possible AAPL will fail and his shares will devalue greatly. It's also possible they will at least stick with the S&P 500 and his shares will be worth a good bit more. tl;dr yes, lots of people are worth $1000/hr and actually a whole whole lot more. Apple is fighting just because they can, which is actually the entire reason they took this all the way to a trial (and lost!). If they wanted to save money they would have settled when caught red handed. Instead they ran up a huge legal bill and will now spend more money than they could possibly save by trying to fight an "unfair" bill. It's all plain and simple arrogance.

waps 13y ago
Apple is behaving just like any really large firm protecting a stream of profits. In my second year of law one day the professor brought several bottles of rum to the class. Why ? Well he had won a case against the incumbent telco. This was great news and very special because he started the case in his 2nd year of law studies. He was 62 years old at the time, having argued the case on and off for 41 years. For this particular firm, this case was not an exception. They paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars (resulting in great rum), but he claims that there were other factors that made this a good deal for them. He wasn't willing to settle, so they couldn't do that, and a court loss might have lead to regulatory action if it had happened sooner, or it might have led to effective rule changes due to precedent. So they put everything they had behind delaying the case, so it would be nothing more than some cute curiosa in the newspapers. And meanwhile their profits from treating people like this keep accumulating (it had to do with what a company is allowed to do to extract payment, but that's only part of it). Apple is probably likewise using a delaying tactic here. Not that I even find it even remotely plausible that this lawyer was selected based on merit, but apple doesn't care about that. They may use it as an argument to get another judge, but that would just be to get another judge, not because they care. Apple has used it's famous negotiation tactics while controlling a significant portion of the market. This is probably illegal, but pays them handsome profits. They're probably trying to make those profits last.

by jonknee 13y ago

waps 13y ago

Apple is behaving just like any really large firm protecting a stream of profits. In my second year of law one day the professor brought several bottles of rum to the class. Why ? Well he had won a case against the incumbent telco. This was great news and very special because he started the case in his 2nd year of law studies. He was 62 years old at the time, having argued the case on and off for 41 years. For this particular firm, this case was not an exception. They paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars (resulting in great rum), but he claims that there were other factors that made this a good deal for them. He wasn't willing to settle, so they couldn't do that, and a court loss might have lead to regulatory action if it had happened sooner, or it might have led to effective rule changes due to precedent. So they put everything they had behind delaying the case, so it would be nothing more than some cute curiosa in the newspapers. And meanwhile their profits from treating people like this keep accumulating (it had to do with what a company is allowed to do to extract payment, but that's only part of it). Apple is probably likewise using a delaying tactic here. Not that I even find it even remotely plausible that this lawyer was selected based on merit, but apple doesn't care about that. They may use it as an argument to get another judge, but that would just be to get another judge, not because they care. Apple has used it's famous negotiation tactics while controlling a significant portion of the market. This is probably illegal, but pays them handsome profits. They're probably trying to make those profits last.