Lawyers, paralegals and support staff at Winston & Strawn put in more than 40,000 hours to win a recent injunction barring the National Collegiate Athletic Association from capping education-related benefits for certain college athletes, work worth more than $24 million based on the firm's historical billing rates, according to a declaration filed Tuesday alongside a fee motion in the case.

The details of the firm's work alongside co-lead plaintiffs counsel at Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, and Pearson, Simon & Warshaw were included in court papers submitted Tuesday claiming the team of lawyers spent more than 51,000 hours on the case, which culminated in a 10-day bench trial last year. The lawyers are seeking nearly $45 million in attorney fees as a result of what they call “a historic and substantial judgment.”

According to the declaration, the hourly rate for Jeffrey Kessler, co-executive chairman of Winston & Strawn and co-chair of its antitrust/competition and sports law practices, went from $1,180 when the case was initially filed in 2014 to $1,515 in 2019. Partner David Feher's rate went from $960 to $1,245 in the same span, and partner David Greenspan's rate rose from $875 to $1,105.

The firms claim they put in the equivalent of about $29,944,894 in total hourly billings, but they're asking Senior Judge Claudia Wilken of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to apply a multiplier of 1.5 to that amount, based on the novelty of the case, the risks involved and the quality of the defense counsel representing the NCAA and its member conferences.

“Plaintiffs' fees are reasonable in light of the substantial defense resources (involving more than a dozen of the top law firms in the world) that they had to overcome, the difficulty and novelty of the many issues presented by this case, the enormous amount of factual discovery and expert work that was required to prosecute the claims, and the substantial economic value of the injunctive relief delivered to the plaintiff classes,” plaintiffs counsel wrote.

Jeffrey Kessler

Wilken earlier this month found the NCAA in violation of federal antitrust law and issued an injunction barring the organization and its member schools and conferences from capping education-related benefits such as computers, science equipment, postgraduate scholarships and aid to study abroad for NCAA Division I women's and men's basketball players and football players at schools in the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision. Plaintiffs on Tuesday submitted estimates from their economic expert which claim the injunction could be worth as much as $100,000 for individual class members over a four-year period—as much as $235 million annually in total.

Steve Berman

Hagens Berman, according to a separate declaration filed Tuesday, dedicated 5,575.20 hours of lawyer, paralegals and legal staff time to the matter, or $2,742,185 in firm time at historical rates. Name partner Steve Berman put in 514.4 hours on the case at rates ranging from $950 to $1,025 per hour during the case, for a little more than $500,000 worth of total billings.