September has arrived and the new Supreme Court term is just four short weeks away. Lots of petitions have been filed over the summer, and we have a look at a new feature the justices require in them. Also, some of the new term's cases offer a rare look at top practitioners' billing rates—and we have the dollar figures.

Thanks for reading. Contact us at [email protected] and [email protected], and follow us on Twitter at @Tonymauro and @MarciaCoyle.

What's Behind the New Feature in Cert Petitions

If you've been reading Supreme Court petitions for certiorari this summer, you may have noticed that they include a new and informative section: a listing of related proceedings that took place before—sometimes decades before—the case being brought before the high court.

A quick Lexis search of briefs suggests that dozens of petitions, and some briefs in opposition, have added such a list, invoking the court's Rule 14.1(b)(iii) that took effect July 1. It requires that cert petitions provide "a list of all proceedings in state and federal trial and appellate courts, including proceedings in this court, that are directly related to the case in this court."

You'll see the list in Syed v. Maryland, the case made famous by the "Serial" podcast of 2014. In the case Samarripa v. Kizziah, involving filing fees for habeas petitioners, the listing of 18 separate related proceedings takes up three pages. You'll find a list also in Shreveport Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy v. Caddo, challenging the forced removal of a confederate flag at a Louisiana courthouse.

The listings are not all uniform in format, and we've heard of some uncertainty among practitioners about how extensive and inclusive they need to be.

So why did the court suddenly decide to require this data? It traces back to the 2018 Supreme Court case of Washington v. United States, an important, long-running Indian treaty dispute that was granted review in January and set for argument in April of that year.

In March, the clerk of the court informed the parties that then-Justice Anthony Kennedy was recusing himself because he "learned recently that, while serving as a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he participated in an earlier phase of this case. The ordinary conflict check conducted in Justice Kennedy's chambers inadvertently failed to find this conflict."

The last time Kennedy sat as a Ninth Circuit judge was in 1988, and the Indian case came before him in 1985, so the failure seemed understandable. But the episode must have caused consternation at the court, in part because Kennedy's recusal resulted in a 4-4 tie.

"Out of an abundance of caution, I think they wanted to make sure it wouldn't happen again," said Mayer Brown partner Kenneth Geller, a co-author of the Supreme Court Practice treatise. "It shouldn't be a burden." Geller notes that some circuit courts have similar rules.

When the justices adopted new rules in April 2019, the court explained the reasoning behind the change, and it wasn't just aimed at making more work for lawyers: "A complete listing of directly related cases will assist in evaluating whether a justice's involvement in a case before joining the court might require recusal." Hat tip to Justice Kennedy. —Tony Mauro

What New Supreme Court Cases Reveal About Big Law Billing Rates

A team from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher—including Theodore Olson and Theane Evangelis—has agreed to charge the city of Boise, Idaho, up to $300,000 to try to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a city law that would impose certain penalties on homeless and other individuals who sleep on public property, according to an engagement letter that offers new insight into billing practices at the high court.

The Gibson Dunn records and other recent or pending matters involving Supreme Court lawyers—including Paul Clement and Donald Verrilli—provide the latest and rare peek inside the billing arrangements and rates of some of the country's biggest firms and their appellate leaders.

>> Publicly filed billing records that involve the Puerto Rico cases now at the high court show Donald Verrilli's hourly rate is $1,300, up from $1,225 in 2017, when the Financial Management and Oversight Board for Puerto Rico first engaged Munger Tolles & Olson. Daniel Collins, who was recently confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, was billing at $1,075, and Ginger Anders, a former assistant to the solicitor general and clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has billed at $900 per hour. Munger Tolles said it is applying a 15% discount to its standard hourly rates.

>> Kirkland & Ellis partner Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration, was billing at $1,745 as recently as March, according to records in a case involving Parker Drilling Management. The Supreme Court in June held that California's wage-and-hour law does not apply to the Outer Continental Shelf when federal law addresses the relevant issue. Fellow Kirkland partner George Hicks Jr., who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and who worked on the Parker Drilling case with Clement, billed at $1,075 an hour, records show.

>> In a fee request in Texas federal district court last year, Thomas Goldstein, a founder of the Washington appellate boutique Goldstein & Russell, identified his rate as $1,350. Goldstein's colleague Eric Citron reported his billing at $850 an hour. He said in a filing that Goldstein & Russell, as a small firm, often uses "alternative fee arrangements, including flat fees or contingent fee arrangements. Even in these cases, we typically recover our full hourly rates on average." —Mike Scarcella and Marcia Coyle

Covington's Beth Brinkman.

Supreme Court Headlines: What We're Reading

>> Covington's Beth Brinkmann on Returning to Argue at SCOTUS. We caught up with Brinkmann to discuss her return to Supreme Court advocacy, the small number of women in private practice arguing there, and the upcoming term of the court. [NLJ]

>> Inside the Supreme Court Discrimination Cases That Could Change LGBTQ Rights. "The cases are being heard against the backdrop of the stymied passage of the Equality Act, which would enshrine anti-LGBTQ discrimination protections in federal law (28 states presently have no protections for LGBTQ employees). The Act passed in the House of Representatives, but has little chance of getting passed in a Republican-controlled Senate." [Daily Beast]

>> Senate Republicans tell Supreme Court not to be 'cowed' by Democratic senators. "All 53 Republicans in the Senate urged the Supreme Court on Thursday not to be 'cowed' by a brief from a handful of Democratic senators that warned that the court risks its reputation for impartiality if it continues to hear a gun case that the Democrats consider moot." [Washington Post]

>> Blackbeard's Ship Heads to Supreme Court in a Battle Over Another Sort of Piracy. "In November, the Supreme Court will consider a case arising from the discovery of the ship's wreckage off the North Carolina coast. It concerns another sort of piracy: a claim that the State of North Carolina stole copyrighted videos of the submerged remains of the ship." [New York Times]

>> Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has No Plans to Retire. But Washington Is Preparing for the Battle Over Her Seat. "A source with knowledge of the process says key judges to watch in case of a Ginsburg vacancy would be Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit, Joan Larsen of the Sixth Circuit, Allison Eid of the Tenth Circuit, Britt Grant of the Eleventh Circuit, and Amul Thapar of the Sixth Circuit." [Time]

>> Employment Issues to take Center Stage in New SCOTUS Term. "The high court is primed for further fireworks in its 2019 term, where it will decide several cases with game-changing potential and far-reaching consequences for employers." [NLJ]