A recent Law.com story by Abgail Adcox, “Big Law Takes Bigger Bet on Contingency Fee Practices”, reports that, in a quest to maximize profitability, Am Law 200 law firms have grown their share of business tied to contingency fees, a gamble that has paid off for some firms in recent years.  Kirkland & Ellis, Crowell & Moring, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Susman Godfrey are among the firms that have represented plaintiffs on a contingency fee basis, agreeing to take on certain litigation in return for a portion of any recovery in a settlement or judgment.

And it’s not just these firms, say litigation funders.  ”It’s fair to say we’ve seen a noticeable increase in interest in building out plaintiff side practices among the more traditional defense-oriented law firms,” said Evan Meyerson, director at Burford Capital, in an interview.  “There’s a growing desire to become—and comfort level with becoming—truly the one-stop shop for their institutional clients.”

Last year, Burford executed multiple portfolio-style transactions with first-time counterparties in the Am Law 50, Meyerson reported.  Firms are seeking new ways to “differentiate their businesses,” with plaintiff-side litigation being a “pretty powerful differentiator in the marketplace,” according to Meyerson.  ”We’re definitely seeing an increase in appetite among what were traditionally the more risk-averse law firms in growing their contingency practices.”

Law firms such as Kirkland & Ellis have trumpeted a concerted effort to expand its contingency docket in recent years.  In 2021, Kirkland brought home a $200 million contingency fee for its representation of client Huntsman Corp. in a dispute.  Overall, in 2022, Kirkland said it had secured more than $2 billion in recoveries in trials for clients such as Motorola and Trizetto.

“We launched what’s now a very successful plaintiff-side practice on the view that we’re uniquely positioned in the market to arm our top trial lawyers with unlimited resources and a willingness to invest whatever it takes for the right cases,” Andrew Kassof, a leader of Kirkland’s litigation practice and a member of its executive committee, said in a statement this week.  “This practice has remained really active, with a number of new litigation matters filed last year and more coming in 2024,” Kassof added.

Other firms are also seeking out more contingency fee work.  For instance, at DLA Piper, the firm is “looking to exploit contingency fee opportunities more.  That’s part of our strategy for the firm.  We’re not going to do it wholesale, but where the opportunity works for our philosophy, we’re going to do it,” said global co-CEO, co-chair and Americas chair Frank Ryan.

Financial Swings

However, due to the unpredictable nature of when cases lead to recoveries, firms’ contingency practices have sometimes resulted in sharp swings in financial performances over the years for some.  A slow year for contingency collections contributed to Fish & Richardson’s 2.4% decline in gross revenue, firm president and CEO John Adkisson said.

“At a high level, I’m thrilled with where our business levels are,” said Adkisson, noting that the firm’s “core” or non-contingent revenue rose for the seventh year in a row.  “On the contingent side, our principals here recognize that that is going to ebb and flow.  We have a number of very exciting opportunities in the pipeline but 2023 was a slower year in terms of contingency fee recoveries.”

Crowell & Moring’s gross revenue growth slowed last year, inching up 0.9% to $595.5 million, as receipts from the firm’s contingency docket returned to lower levels in 2023.

In previous years the firm has reported hefty contingency fees supporting double-digit percentage revenue growth.  In 2020, a year in which the firm recovered more than $2.2 billion for clients in affirmative recoveries, the firm posted an 18.7% increase in gross revenue.

Crowell chair Phil Inglima said in an interview that the firm is “balancing prudently how much we’re investing in contingent docket versus how much we’re deriving from the traditional strengths of the firm.”

Inglima reported that the firm only factors a “small amount” of contingency matters into the firm’s budget each year and that attorneys spend no more than 10-12% of their time overall on the matters.  “We do anticipate with some precision when the claim funds will be paying, when distribution events will occur from that.  So that’s the only part that we really budgeted at all,” Inglima said about 2023.  “We did achieve at the level that we expected in the budget last year, but we didn’t have extraordinary receipts to have a windfall of any kind in 2023 for the contingent docket.”

Meanwhile, at Quinn Emanuel, gross revenue increased nearly 28% to $2.07 billion in 2023.  Approximately 8% of the firm’s revenue came in the form of contingency fees, a slightly higher proportion than 2022, but not materially, Michael Carlinsky, one of three co-managing partners at the firm, told The American Lawyer in an interview.

Trial firm Susman Godfrey nearly doubled its revenue in 2023 and more than doubled its profits per equity partner.  According to Kalpana Srinivasan, co-managing partner at Susman, 71% of the firm’s fees in 2023 came from contingent-fee work, compared with 43% contingent-fee in 2022.

Those percentages reflect the lifecycle of litigation, Srinivasan said. “We have 40-plus years of experience in contingent-fee matters.  We know you can’t precisely designate when a case is going to resolve or generate revenue, but that’s OK, because we have so many of them in the pipeline,” she said.

King & Spalding and Dorsey & Witney leaders also said contingency fee cases contributed to their firm’s financial gains last year.  For 2022, Lowenstein Sandler cited litigation and contingency fee work as a driver of a double-digit percentage gains in revenue and profits that year.

Lit Funding Terms

In light of the risks that come with contingency work, firms have increasingly sought out funders such as Burford Capital, which will fund a portion of their fees and expenses.  “Our deals are what we call non-recourse,” said Meyerson, adding that means, “if a case we finance loses, our counter-party on that deal keeps that financing and has no further obligations to repay Burford.”

“Probably unsurprisingly, our pricing reflects that risk,” he added.  “We’re usually seeking some combination of a multiple on our investment amount, percentage of the outcome or an interest rate that in aggregate typically resembles a law firm contingency rate.”  As a result, there is not a “one-size-fits-all model” for Burford’s pricing, Meyerson said.

“It is typical for firms to come to us asking for something close to full coverage on expenses, whereas on fees, there’s greater variability with firms who are willing to take on more or less of that risk,” Meyerson later said.  While, overall law firms typically only see a small portion of their revenue derived from alternative fee arrangements, which includes contingency work, the percentage has grown in recent years.

The Citi Law Firm Leaders Survey found that 20.6% of 2022 revenue came from AFAs, which is the highest average the survey has recorded.  In 2023, similar proportions are expected, according to the 2024 Citi Hildebrand Client Advisory.  By 2025, 72% of law firms expect revenue from AFAs to increase, the advisory said.

A recent Law 360 story by Jeff Montgomery, “Epic Tesla Fee Bid May Blaze Extraordinary Chancery Path”, reports that an unprecedented $5 billion-plus stock-based fee award sought by class attorneys who recently short-circuited Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 12-step, $51 billion compensation package has set up an equally unprecedented test for Delaware Court of Chancery fee guidelines and a potential award one law expert described as "dynastic wealth."

Class attorneys who have battled Tesla's compensation scheme for Musk since mid-2018 last week sought more than 11% of the 266,947,208 Tesla shares freed up Jan. 30, when Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick ordered rescission of the options that Tesla's board awarded to Musk in an all-stock compensation plan.  The value had been estimated initially at $5.6 billion, but would fluctuate with the value of Tesla's stock.

While the process of seeking a stock fee award instead of cash is not unprecedented, it is an unusual posture for Delaware Chancery litigation, and its scale is likely to reopen what were once considered settled questions over counsel risks, rewards, and just how much attorneys can command for corporate benefit fees, experts told Law360.

"Given the order of magnitude here, I suspect that the case will not set any records in terms of percentage of the recovery awarded to the plaintiffs attorneys, but in absolute terms it'll still amount to dynastic wealth," said University of Connecticut School of Law professor Minor Myers. He described the fee as "destined to be epic, if only because it involves the invalidation of a pay package that was itself comically large."

Chancellor McCormick put the fee in play with an order rescinding Musk's 12-tranche, all-stock compensation plan Jan. 30, after a week-long trial in November 2022.  The ruling cited disclosure failures, murky terms, conflicted director architects and Musk's own conflicted influence in Tesla's creation of an Everest-sized mount of fast-triggering stock options.

"Plaintiff won complete recission of the largest pay package ever issued," the fee motion, filed last week, said.  "Our research demonstrates that the court's decree of recission, conservatively valued, was the largest compensatory award in the history of American jurisprudence by multiples," driven by "the gargantuan size of the tort underlying this action."

But class attorneys are seeking an equally gargantuan fee, even after departing from calculation customs that Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster stressed last year in declining to apply a size reduction to a nearly 27%, $267 million award to stockholders who challenged a Dell Technolgies stock swap in 2018.  In his fee ruling, the vice chancellor said the calls to reduce the Dell fee conflicted with court efforts to reward attorneys for going deeper into litigation and taking greater risks in pursuit of legitimate claims.

"Of course, everyone involved will try to fit this into an existing framework, but the reality is that a $5.6 billion fee award is staggeringly high, whatever factors are considered," said Lyman P.Q. Johnson, Robert O. Bentley professor of law, emeritus, at Washington and Lee School of Law.  "I think Chancellor McCormick will find a way to go a fair bit lower, while still providing the attorneys with a very high award of some amount."  Johnson added: "The shock of Musk's compensation, undone by the chancellor, is unlikely to be followed by what many would regard as a shockingly high $5.6 billion fee award."

Vice Chancellor Laster's most recent big fee ruling established, pending appeal, a $266.7 million fee last year for attorneys who secured a $1 billion settlement for minority stockholders who sued over a $23.9 million Dell Technologies stock swap in 2018.

In Dell, the vice chancellor rejected investor arguments that large "mega-fund" settlements justified throttling back on fee payouts because customary fee percentages can produce massive, windfall payouts.  Instead, Vice Chancellor Laster defended the use of customary, variable percentages, including 15% to 25% shares of awards for settlements after "meaningful litigation and motion practice" and up to 33% post-trial.  He also acknowledged the tension between successful plaintiffs' counsel seeking appropriate compensation and large investors working to minimize carve-outs from court awards.

In Tesla, class attorneys, wary of blowback over big recoveries borne of typical fee ratios, acknowledged the Dell ruling's guidance, but also pointed to an earlier ruling that produced the current largest court-approved fee, a $304 million award approved in 2011 by then-Chancellor Leo E. Strine and upheld by Delaware's Supreme Court a year later.

That decision required Grupo Mexico to return to Southern Peru Copper Corp. nearly $1.3 billion worth of Southern Peru stock — rather than cash — after finding that Southern Copper had been coerced by a conflicted, controlling stockholder into overpaying for a Grupo Mexico mine in 2005.  With pre- and post-judgment interest, the award reached more than $2 billion, with class attorneys awarded 15%, or $304 million, for fees and expenses.

Tesla class attorneys referenced the 15% fee carve-out approved in Southern Peru, but adjusted even that percentage downward — to just over 11% — to reflect value added by the absence of a holding period for any award of Tesla shares before they could be sold.  Case costs included more than $13.6 million in attorney fees and more than $1.1 million in expenses during the multi-year Chancery action.  Requested fees would equal a $288,888 hourly rate that the fee motion said was justified by the case's complexity, results and attorney skill levels, among other factors.

Jill E. Fisch, Saul A. Fox distinguished professor of business law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said use of stock for attorney fees was once "kind of frowned upon," but is not unprecedented.  "They are repeat players" in Delaware's courts, Fisch said of the attorney teams that prevailed in the Tesla case.  "They want credibility before the court.  The numbers, I think, reflect the benefit and risk of this kind of litigation, and traditionally, Chancery Court has acknowledged those risks."

The suit, led by stockholder Richard Tornetta, branded Musk's compensation package as unprecedented and unfair, noting that Musk had already qualified for some $20 billion in awards by the time the suit was filed, "making him one of the richest men on Earth" at the time.  It alleged in part that he relied on two in-house Tesla attorneys for work on the plan before the board's conflicted compensation committee took up the issue.

Ann M. Lipton, the Michael M. Fleishman associate professor in business law and entrepreneurship at Tulane University Law School and associate dean, pointed to another Tesla- and Musk-related case to illustrate the risks stockholder attorneys take.

Last year, after about seven years of litigation, Delaware's Supreme Court upheld a post-trial dismissal of a suit filed by stockholders of rooftop solar venture SolarCity, seeking damages tied to Tesla's $2.6 billion purchase of the company, for which Musk was CEO and also held a big share of company stock.

At one point during the case, the SolarCity stockholders suggested a damage award amounting to a $13 billion giveback of Tesla stock Musk received for his SolarCity shares. Dismissal of the case and rejection of class claims, however, wiped out class attorneys' hopes for a share of a big award.

In the more-recent scuttling of Musk's Tesla stock awards, Lipton said, shareholders benefited from the stock award cancelations by being dramatically less diluted in their holdings.  "That the attorneys are asking for a little bit of dilution" through their fee, "but far less than the shareholders would otherwise have suffered, seems like a real benefit that was provided, from a financial point of view."

Lipton said she was not familiar enough with the current Tesla fee motion to comment on the percentage sought, but cited the enormous risk and stockholder counsel loss in SolarCity and said that "attorneys deserve to be compensated" when they prevail.

University of Michigan Law School professor Gabriel Rauterberg said the fee bid in Tesla appears excessive, despite the importance of fee as a motivator.  "It seems to me extremely implausible that an award this large is necessary to provide the right incentives, given that plaintiffs attorneys' fixed costs for investigating lawsuits, conducting research, and prosecuting cases can be significant but not on this scale," Rauterberg said.  "It seems like a windfall to me. You can give the attorneys a large award, while still falling short of billions."

Counsel for the Tesla stockholders have pointed out that Delaware's Supreme Court has in the past declined to replace the current fee approach with declining percentages.  "Under Delaware law, the unprecedented size of the benefit conferred does not alter plaintiff's counsel's entitlement to 33% of that benefit," attorneys for the Tesla stockholders wrote.  They also pointed to voluntary concessions reducing the total ask to around 11%, with features that reduce the cost to the company.

Some of the sting felt by Tesla, the brief indicated, could be taken away by federal tax law terms that will make 21% of the fee award cash tax-deductible, reducing the post-tax fee award cost from $5.63 billion to $4.45 billion.  State corporate income tax and payroll tax deductions and allowances also could offset the share payout.

UConn's Myers said the Tesla stockholder attorneys won a landmark victory and "deserve to be compensated handsomely" for taking a risky case through trial, while also predicting that the court will "take a hard look at the magnitude of the benefit actually achieved here — that may be a figure in some dispute."  The case nevertheless also stands as an example of "how the Delaware system effectively harnesses the efforts of folks like the plaintiffs attorneys to generate powerful incentives for good governance at public companies," Myers said.

A recent Law.com article by Adam J. Levitt, “Arguing Class Actions: Why the Catalyst Theory Matters”, examines the catalyst theory in class action litigation.  This article was posted with permission.  The article reads:

The story presents a conundrum.  Plaintiffs file a class action, which the defendant initially resists.  Plaintiffs counsel spends hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) in lodestar and costs prosecuting the case, but after potentially years of hotly contested litigation, the defendant issues a recall or announces a refund program that fixes the problem and then argues that the case is moot.  The question: Should those who filed this case, and consequently induced (or “catalyzed”) the defendant to fix the problem, be paid?

The right answer is obvious.  Of course the plaintiffs lawyers should be paid.  Without plaintiffs counsel’s actions and active litigation threat, the defendant would have never changed its behavior, ultimately for consumers’ benefit.  The law routinely rewards those who confer benefits on others, even in the absence of, say, a contractual guarantee (as with the doctrine of quantum meruit).  In short, nobody works for free.  Nobody, as some would have it, except plaintiffs lawyers.

The Rise and Fall of the Catalyst Theory

Rewarding lawyers for catalyzing a change used to be noncontroversial. See, e.g., Marbley v. Bane, 57 F.3d 224 (2d Cir. 1995) (“a plaintiff whose lawsuit has been the catalyst in bringing about a goal sought in litigation, by threat of victory … has prevailed for purposes of an attorney’s fee claim…”); Pembroke v. Wood Cnty., Texas, 981 F.2d 225, 231 (5th Cir. 1993) (recognizing viability of catalyst theory); Wheeler v. Towanda Area Sch. Dist., 950 F.2d 128, 132 (3d Cir. 1991) (same).

But the law became murkier in May 2001, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home v. W. Virginia Dep’t of Health & Hum. Res., 532 U.S. 598 (2001).  There, an assisted living facility sued West Virginia, arguing that a regulation violated the Fair Housing Amendments Act.  After the suit was filed, the Legislature removed the regulation, mooting the case.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff was not a “prevailing party” for purposes of the applicable fee-shifting statute.  Discarding the “catalyst theory,” it ruled that: “A defendant’s voluntary change in conduct, although perhaps accomplishing what the plaintiff sought to achieve by the lawsuit, lacks the necessary judicial imprimatur on the change” sufficient to make the plaintiff a “prevailing party.” Id. at 605.  As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in her dissent, the Buckhannon decision frustrates the goals of the catalyst theory because it “allows a defendant to escape a statutory obligation to pay a plaintiff’s counsel fees, even though the suit’s merit led the defendant to abandon the fray, to switch rather than fight on, to accord plaintiff sooner rather than later the principal redress sought in the complaint.” Id. at 622 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).

The Catalyst Theory Today

Notwithstanding the Buckhannon decision, the catalyst theory remains a powerful tool outside of Buckhannon’s specific context.

First, Buckhannon has no bearing on state causes of action.  In California, Cal. Code Civ. Proc. §1021.5 allows a court to award fees to a “successful” party.  The California Supreme Court has explained it takes a “broad, pragmatic view of what constitutes a ‘successful party,’” Graham v. DaimlerChrysler, 34 Cal. 4th 553, 565 (2004), and explicitly endorsed the “catalyst theory [as] an application of the … principle that courts look to the practical impact of the public interest litigation in order to determine whether the party was successful.” Id. at 566.  In short, it disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding what it means to “prevail” or “succeed” in a litigation.

The catalyst theory has also largely survived in the context of favorable settlements.  For example, in Mady v. DaimlerChrysler, 59 So.3d 1129 (Fla. 2011), the Supreme Court of Florida considered an award of attorney fees to a consumer who accepted defendant’s offer of judgment, an offer that neither conceded liability nor plaintiff’s entitlement to fees, in a case filed under the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act (MMWA), which guarantees fees to a “prevailing party.” Id. at 1131.  Explicitly considering and distinguishing Buckhannon, the court found that a party may “prevail” with a settlement.  In doing so, it rearticulated the logic underpinning the catalyst theory:

[The plaintiff] achieved the same result with a monetary settlement only after being forced to bear all of the costs and expenses associated with litigation and facing the statutory penalty if the offer of judgment had not been accepted. DaimlerChrysler could have resolved this dispute during the “informal dispute settlement” phase, but instead waited until after [plaintiff] was forced to commence this action and incur the expenses of this litigation. Id. at 1133.

Further, even in federal court, attorney fees may be awarded under statutes other than those limiting such awards to “prevailing” parties.  For example, in Templin v. Indep. Blue Cross, 785 F.3d 861 (3d Cir. 2015), the Third Circuit explained that a fee may be awarded for an Employee Retirement Income Security Act claim under the catalyst theory, because ERISA does not limit fee awards to the “prevailing party.” 785 F.3d at 865.  Including the Third Circuit, at least five circuits have endorsed the catalyst theory under such statutes: Scarangella v. Group Health, 731 F.3d 146, 154–55 (2d Cir. 2013); Ohio River Valley Env’l Coalition v. Green Valley Coal, 511 F.3d 407, 414 (4th Cir. 2007); Sierra Club v. Env’l Protection Agency, 322 F.3d 718, 726 (D.C. Cir. 2003); Loggerhead Turtle v. Cty. Council, 307 F.3d 1318, 1325 (11th Cir. 2002).

Despite the ongoing recognition of the catalyst theory in many contexts, there remains the risk that courts may apply the catalyst theory narrowly, or that defendants may find a way around it. Consider Gordon v. Tootsie Roll Indus., 810 F. App’x 495, 496 (9th Cir. 2020), a “slack-fill” case in which the plaintiff alleged that the defendant’s boxes of Junior Mints were mostly air.  After the plaintiff moved for class certification, the defendant changed the box’s label.  The plaintiffs dismissed and moved for fees.

The fee application was denied because “Gordon’s theory of the case was that the size of the box was itself misleading, and that Tootsie Roll should either fill the Products’ box with more candy to account for the size of the box … or shrink the box to accurately represent the amount of the candy product therein[, and] Tootsie Roll did not make either of these changes.” Id. at 497 (internal quotation omitted).  Considering the disincentives (or, conversely, the moral hazards) that arise from this type of narrow application of the catalyst theory, courts should take a decidedly more equitable view when adjudicating this important issue.

A Way Forward

For practitioners, a few lessons come out of this case law and history.  First, in writing their complaint, attorneys must think through the various paths that a company might take to remedy the purported harm.  Recall that in Gordon, the plaintiff focused entirely on the misleading box, but not on the misleading labeling. Second, favorable settlements and offers of judgment remain viable tools, and may support a catalyst theory attorney-fee payment even if the defendant resists paying fees in the settlement itself.  Finally, despite Buckhannon, the catalyst theory remains readily available under a host of statutes (state and federal).  In relying on citing those statutes, plaintiffs should not shy away from the catalyst theory’s compelling logic.  Courts understand that basic fairness requires that attorneys be paid if their lawsuit ultimately confers a significant benefit.  Nobody should work for free.  Not even plaintiffs lawyers.

Adam J. Levitt is a founding partner of DiCello Levitt, where he heads the firm’s class action and public client practice groups.  DiCello Levitt senior counsel Daniel Schwartz also contributed to this article.

A recent Law.com story by Abigail Adcox “ ‘D.C. Was Our Best-Performing Region’: Billing Rate Increases and Demand Growth Drive Strong Year in the Beltway”, reports that law firms based in Washington, D.C., finished out 2023 with a strong financial performance, propelled by billing rate increases, expense control and robust demand within regulatory and litigation practices, according to results from a bank survey.

Among D.C.-based firms, gross revenue was up 7.6% in 2023 over the previous year, higher than the industry average of 6%, as the average billing rates in the region rose 8.8% compared with the industry average of 8.3%, according to Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group’s year-end survey results.  Those results included eight firms headquartered in the D.C. region.

“D.C. was our best-performing region,” said Owen Burman, senior consultant and managing director with the Wells Fargo Legal Specialty Group.  “When talking to firms to really find out what drove it, the regulatory side was on fire for so many firms. And litigation overall has been supporting many firms this past year.”  In average revenue growth, D.C. firms exceeded peers in New York City (7%), California (6.6%), Texas (6.3%), Florida (5.9%), Chicago (5.2%), Philadelphia (4.7%) and Atlanta (4.4%), according to Wells Fargo data.

“The practice mix was very much in favor of D.C.-headquartered firms” in 2023, Burman said, citing robust demand within restructuring, antitrust and litigation practices, as other firms saw the impact of slowdowns in the transactional market.  It follows a lackluster 2022 for D.C. firms, which “underperformed,” as anticipated enforcement activities under the Biden administration didn’t come to fruition as expected, according to Burman.

However, in 2023, as demand picked up within regulatory and litigation practices, D.C. firms were able to control expenses and were less aggressive in hiring, contributing to their revenue growth.  Profits per equity partner were up 10.7%, compared with the industry average of 4.9%.  The number of full-time equivalent lawyers at D.C. firms also grew by 2%, slightly below the industry average of 2.8%. However, productivity at D.C. firms was down 1%, still better than the industry average (down 2.1%).

Demand among all lawyers was also slightly better at D.C. firms (0.9%) than the industry average (0.7%), but fell short of peers in New York City, which saw a 2% increase in demand.

Controlling Expenses

Meanwhile, total expenses grew 4.1%, the best out of all eight regions tracked, and above the industry average of 6%.  “They were able to control the expense growth much better than peers,” Burman said.  “Last year they were able to control the lawyer compensation pressures a bit more than other markets.”

Billing rate increases were in large part able to compensate for increases in lawyer compensation at D.C. firms last year.  “All together the rate increases are covering it.  The problem is that they were hoping it would cover other investments and now they have to redirect that money into supporting the lawyer compensation,” said Burman, adding that artificial intelligence and innovation investments are other top priorities for firm expenses.

Because of these expenses and other priorities, in 2024, D.C.-based firms may see more expense pressure, and they may be more in line with the industry averages in expense growth, he said.  Still, entering the year, D.C. firms are “optimistic,” Burman added, expecting strong demand within litigation and regulatory practices to continue.  “Their growth estimates are quite optimistic,” Burman said.  “Litigation, restructuring practices are still quite strong.  So those haven’t tailed off as we’re anticipating this rebound in transactions.”

A recent article by Judge Marina Corodemus and Mark Eveland, “Four Ways Plaintiffs’ Firm Can Prevent Common Benefit Fund Fee Disputes”, reports on ways plaintiffs’ firms can prevent common benefit fund fee disputes.  This article was posted with permission.  The article reads:

Common benefit funds (CBFs) ensure fairness and equity in the distribution of legal fees and expenses in aggregate and complex litigation, including class actions, mass torts, trust and securities, and multidistrict litigations (MDLs), where the litigation is prosecuted by either an ad hoc or judicially appointed committee or team of attorneys.  Their primary purpose is to recognize and compensate the plaintiffs’ attorneys who contribute their time, expertise, and resources to advancing the interests of most, if not all, of the plaintiffs in a particular litigation, including litigants who are not their clients but are benefited by the attorneys’ work product prosecuting the suit.

CBFs provide a compensation mechanism that enables large scale, highly expensive complex class actions and mass torts to proceed.  They provide the financial incentive for plaintiffs’ attorney groups to organize and then collect and centralize financial contributions and disbursements necessary to fund critical litigation activities like document management and reviews, scientific or factual investigations, expert recruitment, and, where needed, retention of specialized legal experts (such as bankruptcy, tax, and transactional practitioners).  CBFs help ensure that no single attorney or firm shoulders the entire financial burden of the legal work that puts the plaintiffs in complex litigation in position to resolve the litigation favorably.  When appropriately managed, CBFs reward attorneys and firms for doing work that benefits the greater good.

Certainly, attorneys who take on the risks and leadership roles in complex litigation deserve fair compensation for their efforts.  But lately, there seems to be a larger number of disputes over disbursements from CBFs among the plaintiffs’ firms involved in complex litigation (so called “Common Benefit Attorneys”) when and where such disbursements are forthcoming.  These disputes often garner public attention, perpetuating a narrative that plaintiffs’ attorneys are motivated solely by greed and self-interest.  Certain defense firms whose clientele often are mass tort defendants and advocacy organizations—the entities most responsible for creating this narrative in the first place—are happy to use those disputes as part of their public relations efforts supporting “tort reform.”

The pelvic mesh MDL, established in 2010 and which involved over 100,000 female plaintiffs suing seven companies in what is undoubtedly one of the most complicated MDLs in history because it is a series of seven MDLs (MDL nos. 2187, 2325, 2326, 2327, 2387, 2440 and 2511) consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, is an example of how a highly publicized CBF dispute can cast a shadow on the legal profession.  That dispute, like so many other CBF disputes, centered on whether certain law firms deserved the allotted fees from the CBF that the members of the plaintiffs’ executive committee in that litigation allocated to them.

And, just this past August, the Ninth Circuit settled a dispute—for now—in the Bard IVC filters litigation, In Re Bard IVC Filters Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 2641 (D. Ariz.), established in 2015, regarding whether plaintiffs’ attorneys who agree to contribute to common benefit funds in MDLs are bound by those deals if they settle cases that were not part of an MDL.

In our view, there are four principal causes of CBF disputes.  We list them below, along with strategies for preventing them.

1.  A lack of billing standards and concurrent billing and time/expense review can be readily avoided through precise case management orders (CMOs) and clear billing guidelines.

Many CBF disputes are caused by the absence of well-defined requirements and standards for billing common benefit time and expenses.  Ambiguity surrounding billing practices leads to inconsistencies in the way attorneys record and submit their costs, giving rise to misunderstandings and disputes when fees are allocated.  Additionally, the lack of a standardized framework and mechanics for billing and expenses complicates attorneys’ perceptions of the fairness and validity of fee requests, in turn potentially eroding trust among plaintiffs’ firms.  Without clear and precise billing standards in place, and an evenhanded administration of those standards, it becomes challenging to objectively gauge the contributions of each attorney and firm.

Implementing comprehensive case management orders (CMOs) and clear billing guidelines can prevent CBF disputes.  CMOs should not only specify the tasks that qualify for compensation but also the allowable rates and expenses.  In doing so, they will provide an independent standard to reference when disputes arise.

For instance, a standardized CMO might include a provision stating that research tasks directly related to the case, such as reviewing medical records or consulting with expert witnesses, are billable, while unrelated tasks, like administrative work, are not.  (Of course, in highly complicated cases requiring extensive coordination and collaboration, administrative work may certainly be deemed permitted billable time.)  In addition, it is well established that there is a hierarchy of value for work that has a greater impact on the litigation and generates more “common benefit.”  Such work deserves greater compensation.  A CMO and related agreements can specify this hierarchy, providing guidelines for determining what kind of work generates a common benefit, and calculating the fees to be paid for this work.

CMOs and agreements as to billing guidelines are binding and provide clarity needed during fee allocation in MDL cases, potentially preventing major fee disputes.

For example, the CBF dispute in the pelvic mesh litigation arose in part because of a disagreement over what work provided more of a common benefit: the settlement of cases quickly and for relatively small dollar amounts or high-dollar jury verdicts.  Ultimately, Judge Joseph R. Goodwin of the Southern District of West Virginia granted a request from a fee and cost committee in that litigation that deemed the former to provide more common benefit than the latter.

The Bard IVC filters litigation provides another useful illustrative case.  There, some plaintiffs’ attorneys moved to reduce and exempt their clients’ recoveries from common benefit and expense assessments, arguing that no assessment should be paid by clients whose cases were filed in federal court after the MDL closed, were filed in state court, or were never filed in any court. U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell of the District of Arizona denied this motion.  As we noted above, the Ninth Circuit affirmed Campbell’s ruling, holding that these attorneys, who had agreed to pay a share of their fees to the MDL leaders, were required to abide by those agreements even if they settled cases outside of the consolidated proceeding.

Agreed-upon CMOs that set forth procedures, guidelines, and limitations for submitting applications for reimbursement of litigation fees and expenses inuring to the claimants’ common benefit can be instrumental in resolving or avoiding CBF disputes.

2.  The problems caused by late submissions of billing records can be avoided by requiring attorneys to make regular, contemporaneous submissions.

Another frequent cause of CBF disputes is attorneys delaying their submission of billing records.  Too often, attorneys and their support teams, engrossed in all-consuming complex litigation, fail to timely submit their time and expense records.  Attorneys sometimes submit crucial billing details months or even years after the fact, making it necessary for others to “forensically” reconstruct this information, a practice that not only jeopardizes the accuracy of time and expense submissions but may result in crucial work being overlooked or submitted without adequate supporting documentation. 

Delayed submissions also prevent courts and plaintiffs’ leadership teams from performing comprehensive and accurate assessments of work described in billing submissions.

CMOs or fee committees that mandate the regular submission of time and expense records can put an end to this problem.  As was the case in the pelvic mesh MDL, adopting CMOs that include specific provisions requiring attorneys to submit their time and expense records at regular intervals throughout a litigation significantly enhances efficiency and transparency.  These CMOs may, for instance, stipulate that detailed records must be submitted monthly or quarterly, with a reduction in potential compensation for any submissions beyond agreed-upon deadlines. 

This practice ensures that time and expense records are submitted relatively promptly after attorneys perform the work described in them, capturing the most accurate information (and fresh memories).  The regular submission of records also enables the court and MDL leadership to compare billing records with case calendars to determine if the work completed and the time spent completing it is consistent with expectations of when that work should have been completed and how long it should have taken.

3.  The lack of independent oversight can be remedied by bringing on a neutral.

When plaintiffs’ leadership teams collect, review, and approve CBF allocations, and stand to benefit personally from those decisions, it is easy to see how this lack of independent oversight can cause CBF disputes and give rise to accusations of conflicts of interest and self-dealing.  Appointing a neutral third party to oversee time and expense submissions to the CBF and mediate disputes can remedy this problem. 

This impartial overseer should be an independent legal expert or mediator with no vested interest in the litigation outcome, which should preclude accusations of conflicts of interest and self-dealing.  This neutral party should also be empowered to enforce deadlines for submissions, review and evaluate the reasonableness of time and expenses submissions, disallow submissions containing excessive time and expenses, and swiftly address any discrepancies that arise during the allocation process.

Some attorneys and judges are satisfied with handing off the issues at the center of a CBF dispute to an accountant.  We would suggest that the calculations necessary to resolve such a dispute require more than a bookkeeping background.  We believe hiring a neutral who is experienced in mass torts litigation and awarding attorneys’ fees, and who recognizes the worth of litigation roles, is a superior selection method.

4.  Disputes caused by an opaque process could be reduced by making it more transparent.

Inadequate transparency is a major cause of CBF disputes.  Those attorneys and firms that are not in leadership positions often have limited knowledge of the fees and expenses incurred as the litigation progresses, which could make them feel blindsided when their allocated fees are less than those they submitted.  Without ongoing and timely communication regarding billing submissions and allocations, attorneys and firms outside the leadership circle may question the fairness and reasonableness of both.

The solution to this problem is simple.  Leadership committees in complex litigation should provide all law firms that pay assessments into the CBF with regular reports that explain time and expense submissions.  In addition, every firm could ask questions of the people responsible for submitting those bills and allocating distributions from a CBF.

Attorneys whose inquiries are addressed by leadership and a court-appointed neutral throughout the process are far less likely to contest fee allocations at the conclusion.  Plus, increased transparency enhances confidence among plaintiffs’ firms, fostering greater trust and a more cooperative environment.

Simple solutions to a complex problem?

Given the time plaintiffs’ attorneys spend litigating complex litigation, it is not surprising that they want to ensure they are paid for the work they did that went to the common benefit of the plaintiffs in a litigation.  But given the number of attorneys and firms representing clients in these litigations, and the sizes of CBFs in complex litigation today—the CBF in the Vioxx litigation, In re Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 1657 (E.D. La.), established in 2005, was $315 million—disputes over whether those attorneys’ contributions are fairly reflected in their CBF allocation are practically inevitable.

In our view, the core four causes of CBF disputes can be reduced in frequency and severity, if not outright eliminated, by implementing standardized billing practices, promoting timely billing submissions, and instituting impartial oversight and increasing transparency concerning the CBF allocation process.

Unless plaintiffs’ attorneys can eliminate CBF disputes, the positive social change they can bring about through complex litigation will be overshadowed by what the public—thanks in part to the corporate defense bar and advocacy organizations—will perceive as greedy attorneys bickering over millions of dollars.  That, in and of itself, should motivate more plaintiffs’ leadership teams to adopt these methods for reducing CBF disputes.

Judge Marina Corodemus is a former New Jersey Superior Court judge who helped establish New Jersey Mass Torts court (MCL).  She is now the managing partner of the ADR practice at Corodemus & Corodemus.  She has served as a special master in numerous MDLs and complex litigation in federal and state courts.  Mark Eveland is the CEO of Verus, a leading mass tort litigation support services firm.

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