Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell is poised to make a ton of money working on the bankruptcy case of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
A Bloomberg Law report estimates that the sum owed to Sullivan & Cromwell in the FTX lawsuit will reach hundreds of millions of dollars by the time the company’s bankruptcy investigation is over.
With the FTX trial scheduled for October 2023, the firm’s attorneys will spend a significant amount of time and money over the course of about eight months dealing with the complex FTX trial. At Sullivan & Cromwell, more than 150 people, including 30 partners, work on FTX trials at over $2,000 an hour. Associates are charged up to about $1,500 an hour, the report said, citing court filings.
In a court declaration, Sullivan & Cromwell said the proposed rates were in line with market rates offered by other leading law firms and were in fact less than those used in non-bankruptcy cases. there is
Bankruptcy lawyers are in high demand as the crypto winter of 2022 has seen a number of bankruptcy filings, including by major cryptocurrency companies such as Genesis, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.
Lawyers also make big bucks in cases like FTX, according to Temple University professor Jonathan Lipson.For example, a New York law firmWeillGotchell received approximately $500 million in compensation from the 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.
Lipson said such a large outlay could be justified because Sullivan & Cromwell could help recover the money from FTX.
“It’s not whether a lawyer is charging a lot of money, it’s about whether it’s worth it. If you can recover a lot of money, it’s probably worth it.”
