Public-interest lawyers cash in on classroom suits

Monday, January 17, 2005

Lawyers who recently won a very big public-interest lawsuit to make San Francisco schools more accessible to the disabled apparently hope that the case will produce some very big benefits for themselves as well -- like $9 million in fees.

And some of the hourly billings are pretty eye-popping.

Jose Allen, a partner at the San Francisco firm Skadden Arps, is asking for $810 an hour.

Mary Gillespie of the San Francisco Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, is seeking $588 an hour. And her public-interest firm colleague, Patricia Shiu, is asking for $552 an hour.

The other lead attorney, Guy Wallace of Schneider & Wallace, is requesting $522 an hour.

"It's a travesty,'' says school district spokeswoman Lorna Ho. "Here they are said to be representing the kids, and yet the money is going to come straight out of the kids in the classroom.''

The lawyers say that the district's crying poor is bunk, and that it has plenty of other options for paying them -- like, for instance, selling off surplus property.

And they want their piece.

According to arguments filed with the court, the lawyers and paralegals working on the class-action suit logged in 20,000 hours in the case and rang up $1 million in expenses -- including the cost of 100 depositions, 10 expert witnesses and copying 1 million pages of documents.

After more than five years, the district, facing the prospect of a costly trial, agreed recently to a settlement. The deal calls on the district to shell out $300 million over the next 10 years to make classrooms fully accessible to the disabled and blind -- and that doesn't include all the legal costs of the case.

Former Supervisor and City Attorney Louise Renne, who also worked as the general counsel for the school district, said she was particularly outraged by Allen's $810 hourly billing.

Allen is a local partner of the giant, New York-based Skadden Arps firm - - whose Web site touts its commitment to pro bono law work.

"I have never known of any pro bono lawyer doing work at $800-plus an hour,'' Renne said. "To me, it's the height of hypocrisy.''

What's more, she says, it wasn't the plaintiffs' lawyers holding a gun to the district's head that led to a settlement -- it was San Francisco voters agreeing to a $295 million bond for the school fix-ups.

"That's the economic reality,'' she said.

There's another economic reality at play here as well -- the district has only $2 million worth of insurance to cover the plaintiffs' legal bills, so it will have to come up with the rest on its own.

And just how do the costs pencil out?

Put it this way -- for every $1 million, the district could hire 14 teachers, or 14 social workers, or 14 nurses, or 14 librarians, or 14 counselors, or 14 instructional aides, or 13 bus drivers or a year's worth of school supplies for 25,000 elementary school kids.

Wallace, speaking for all the lawyers in the case, said they were reluctant to talk about their fees while they were getting ready to argue for them in San Francisco Superior Court on Jan. 27. But Wallace insisted the district had more than enough resources to cover its legal bills -- including at least $100 million in surplus real estate and $50 million collected from settling other lawsuits in the past year.

"So they do not have to pay any of this out of their general fund in such a way that it's going to have any impact on any child in the district,'' Wallace said.

"It's a lot of money because they fought the case for 5 1/2 years,'' Wallace said. "To the extent Ms. Renne doesn't like the fee application, she has only herself to blame.''

And just in case we still weren't satisfied, Wallace insisted on sending us a cardboard box -- loaded with 8 pounds worth of legal briefs and invoices filed with the court.

Billable, no doubt.

P.S.: Looks like the city hasn't heard the last of Wallace and his attorney friends. Wallace recently filed another, potentially much bigger claim -- this one alleging disability problems citywide, ranging from inadequate pedestrian traffic signals to noncompliant office buildings.

And you can bet the meter on this monster claim is already running.

Shelley's blues: When embattled Secretary of State Kevin Shelley does go before legislators next month, he'll have plenty of problems to talk about.

In addition to questions about how Shelley spent federal voter education money, it turns out another haymaker is headed his way -- a report from the state Personnel Board on how he has run his office.

"It will go right to the heart of how people were hired, how consultant contracts were handed out and how complaints within the office were handled,'' said one source in the know. "It'll read like blood from the walls.''

One of the hottest targets of the report is Shelley's hiring of Andrew Lee, the rap-master son of Shelley supporter Julie Lee. She's the Chinese American community power broker from San Francisco who is under investigation for allegedly laundering state grant money into Shelley's campaign.

After his election in 2002, Democrat Shelley hired young Lee as a $57,000- a-year special assistant.

The report is also expected to take a close look at other service contracts Shelley handed out, especially contracts that wound up in the hands of Democratic political consultants.

Plus, the report is expected to deal with how Shelley dealt with aides --

which, from reports so far, was mercurial to say the least.

None of it looks good.

To see the full story:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/01/17/
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