A recent Law 360 story by Vince Sullivan, “Pillsbury’s Fee Bid Slashed For ’Over-Lawyering’”, reports that a Delaware bankruptcy judge reduced the fees payable to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP for its work on the Chapter 11 case of the owner of a California hotel by $946,654, saying the firm overstaffed the case with senior attorneys in what he described as "over-lawyering."   In an opinion from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John T. Dorsey, the court cited a report from a fee examiner appointed in the case of SC SJ Holdings LLC when it directed the reduction of the firm's fee application, cutting the payable amount from the $6,288,809 requested by Pillsbury down to $5,342,155.

Judge Dorsey said the firm assigned partners and other senior lawyers to tasks below their level of experience, calling the staffing decisions "troubling" in light of Pillsbury twice before having its billings reduced by bankruptcy courts because of similar issues.  "Pillsbury's senior attorneys routinely performed tasks far below their paygrade, including hours of legal research, and they failed to utilize associates for even the most straightforward of tasks such as document review or preparation of privilege logs," Judge Dorsey said.  "This cavalier approach to billing would be unreasonable in any case, but considering this is a firm that has at least twice had its fees reduced for similar staffing concerns, it is troubling."

The firm reduced its rates by 15% before submitting its fee request, and Judge Dorsey directed a further reduction of 10% after other reductions had been made, amounting to a cut of $593,572.  The court also ordered reductions for vague time entries submitted by Pillsbury that don't provide sufficient information about what tasks were being performed and for what reason.

"It is not the Court's job to piece together entries and try to make sense of them. Each entry must be capable of evaluation on its own," the opinion said. "Many of Pillsbury's entries are not."  The reduction in fees on account of vague entries amounts to $67,706.  A further reduction of $284,315 was also ordered by the court because of lumped entries that aggregated billings for multiple activities.