A recent Law 360 story by Ryan Boysen, “Baker Hostetler Gets $32M More in Fees in Madoff Bankruptcy,” reports that BakerHostetler will receive $32 million for four months of work managing the liquidation of Bernie Madoff’s defunct investment firm after a New York bankruptcy court approved the fee request, bringing the firm’s total payout for its work on the Madoff case past the $900 million mark.  The latest fee request covers nearly 82,000 hours of work performed between the beginning of December and the end of March and was approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart M. Bernstein.

BakerHostetler partner Irving H. Picard serves as the liquidating trustee for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and his firm has received about $908 million all told since the case began in 2008, while recovering roughly $12 billion for victims of the $65 billion Ponzi scheme.

The legal costs in the case are paid by the Securities Investor Protection Corp., a member-funded organization that keeps a warchest stocked with roughly $2.5 billion at any given time to shell out for instances like the Madoff fraud.  SIPC covers investor losses directly in many types of financial frauds, and also works with law firms to recover funds for victims in bigger, more complex cases.

In addition to bearing the costs and fees to Picard, the organization has also paid about $555 million in legal expenses to special counsel, consultants and administrators that have worked on the case, according to the trustee.  The latest $32 million payout for BakerHostetler amounts to roughly 90 percent of the $35.7 million the firm was technically awarded for its work.  BakerHostetler and SIPC agreed to the discount early on in the case, and the firm typically receives about $435 an hour for its work, according to court documents.

"The reasonable value of the services for which the trustee and BH seek an allowance has been reduced significantly, based on consultation and review by SIPC, from the standard rates the trustee and BH charge," SIPC's general counsel wrote in a brief recommending the court approve the fee request.

The case is Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC et al., case number 1:08-ap-01789, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.