A recent Law 360 story by Brian Dowling, “Jailed Engineer Rips Quinn Emanuel, WilmerHale Legal Bill”, reports that a former Analog Devices Inc. engineer convicted of trade secrets theft slammed prosecutors' request that he cover his ex-employer's $600,000-plus legal tab with WilmerHale and Quinn Emanuel, pointing to "staggering" rates including the $1,685 per hour former acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb billed to sit in on the month-long trial.

Haoyang Yu, currently serving a six-month sentence, urged U.S. District Judge William G. Young in Boston to deny the government's "untimely, substantively deficient and patently objectionable request" under the federal Mandatory Victim Restitution Act for Yu to pay $609,915 for legal bills that Analog Devices rang up with attorneys at WilmerHale and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

Many of the charges should be disqualified as unnecessary, Yu said, including the hours billed at the four-figure rate by Weinreb, a Quinn Emanuel partner, for his daily attendance watching the trial from the gallery and collaboration with prosecutors — his former colleagues — during breaks.  The federal victims' restitution law "is not a blank check that the government can draw from Mr. Yu to recover every dollar ADI chose to spend on two of the most expensive law firms in the United States," said Yu's response to a government brief.

"ADI, like any person or corporation, is entitled to counsel of its choice," Yu said.  "But it does not serve equal justice," the response continued, "when the corporation, with the government's assistance, later attempts to shift the entire financial burden of that partially privatized prosecution, including the costs [of] private counsel's daily trial attendance, onto the defendant."

The government's attempt to saddle Yu with the company's legal bill amounts to "a new and extraordinary kind of 'trial penalty' that threatens to make criminal jury trials even more rare than they already are," the defendant said.  In an affidavit accompanying the prosecutors' request, Weinreb said the invoices for WilmerHale represented work the firm did for Analog Devices in response to a grand jury subpoena early in the investigation, and the Quinn Emanuel invoices account for the firm's representation of the company since December 2018.

The former acting U.S. attorney wrote that the invoices "understate the losses ADI incurred in connection with the [Department of Justice] investigation and the crime" and do not account for resources spent assisting the government's investigation.  Yu's opposition filing said the two firms' hourly rates "far exceed any court-approved rates" his counsel has been able to find in Massachusetts.  The rates charged by Weinreb increased from $1,150 in December 2018 to $1,865 in July 2023, Yu said, with other Quinn Emanuel hourly rates of $1,440 for "counsel," $1,095 for a fourth-year associate, $880 for a second-year associate and $320 for a paralegal.

WilmerHale partner Anjan Sahni, tapped to become the firm's managing partner in January, came in at $1,105 in April 2018 and $1,165 in October 2019, with other rates including $750 for a fourth-year associate and support personnel ranging from $145 to $500, according to Yu's response.

Yu also challenged Quinn Emanuel's hours billed for preparing witnesses for trial, saying Analog Devices is free to have its private attorneys help the government's prosecution of Yu, but the federal restitution law doesn't put the defendant on the hook for those costs.  The government also wants Yu to pay Analog Devices' bills for complying with defense subpoenas, but "these are not expenses caused by the offense of conviction or the government's investigation," Yu said.

"Imposition of fee shifting for those expenses would impermissibly burden Mr. Yu's exercise of his constitutional right to compulsory process under the Sixth Amendment," the filing reads.  Yu also challenged block-billing practices at both firms that frustrate efforts to break out the costs of unnecessary work, and Weinreb's billing for communications with media related to the case, including time purportedly spent related to a Law360 article and "phone calls with Law360 regarding same."