A Record Courier story, “State Lawmaker Asks AG to Respond to Question about $6 Million in Outside Legal Fees” reports that Nevada State Sen. Greg Brower has asked Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto why an outside legal firm was retained to defend the state against a freeway construction dispute (view letter pdf).  Legal costs charged to the state will total $6 million by the end of an arbitration hearing set for next month.

Brower asked about the process that led to the retention of the firm of Watts, Tieder, Hoffar & Fitzgerald to handle the case beginning in 2008.  He also asked why a Nevada firm was not retained, and what controls are in place to monitor the fee being incurred.  “Those two issues raised red flags with me, and so I thought it made sense to just ask a few questions of the attorney general’s office and ask her to clarify exactly, as I set forth in the letter, why the state has hired this out-of-state firm as opposed to an in-state firm or doing the litigation in the AG’s office,” Brower said.

Scott Magruder, a spokesman for NDOT, said today the agency actually retained the firm, which is one of the leading construction litigation firms in the nation.  The firm has an office in Las Vegas.  The agency wanted quality representation because of the size of the claim, he said.

Gov. Brian Sandoval first raised concerns about the amount of legal fees at a meeting of the Broad of Directors of the Department of Transportation earlier this month.  “Because even at those rates, $6 million, I haven’t seen that before,” Sandoval said at the Jan. 9 meeting.  “I mean this just gets us to the mediation, as you say, and then we don’t know what the outcome of the mediation is going to be after that.”  The rates charged by the law firm’s attorneys are as high as $340 an hour for a senior partner, but members of the board were told the rates are not excessive and have not charged since the dispute first began.