Call The Experts! And Pay Them Well...

A select group of New York lawyers have pushed hourly billing rates past the $1,000 mark, but some sought-after experts in IP trials can demand even more. Specialists in hot technologies command up to $10,000 a day, IP lawyers say. Wei-Ning Yang, a Hogan & Hartson partner in Los Angeles, said that the firm recently paid a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor $2,000 an hour in an IP dispute. “If you have an expert in a field, and the expertise is hard to come by, it would stand to reason he or she can charge a great deal,” says Claude Stern, chairman of the intellectual property group at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges partner Edward Reines says he once paid $10,000 per day, but it was under what he referred to as “unusual cirmstances” that only required the expert’s use for a short period of time. “In the big picture, paying $30,000 to back up your case isn’t a bad deal,” Reines says. “Clearly, there are people who lend enough value to a case that they can charge that.”