How much do you think it costs to hire one of the busiest, most “relentless” Biglaw partners in the game? If you guessed $2,000 an hour, you’d be wrong. You need to go even higher if you want to get representation from a lawyer whose clients include the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and famed actor Alec Baldwin.
If you can pay $3,000 an hour, you can get Quinn Emanuel’s Alex Spiro on your legal team.
According to Reuters, a small group of lawyers at the elite Biglaw firm — which brought in $2,079,448,000 gross revenue in 2023, putting it at No. 18 on the Am Law 100 — are now charging these sky-high rates, including global co-managing partner William Burck. Here are some additional details on the firm’s billing practices:
Quinn Emanuel’s $3,000 top rate marks a milestone for leading U.S. law firms as lawyers’ hourly fees continue to soar.
Law firms routinely raise their rates each year, and top rates at some of the largest U.S. firms have pushed past $2,500 an hour or higher in recent years, court records show.
Quinn Emanuel said in its court filings that its partners now bill between $1,860 and $3,000 an hour. It said it will charge between $1,775 and $2,725 an hour for “of counsel” attorneys at the firm, and between $1,035 and $1,665 for associates.
Biglaw billing rates keep climbing higher and higher for the most in-demand lawyers, and it really shows at Quinn Emanuel, where the firm’s top billable rates have grown by nearly 34% since 2022, when top partners topped out at $2,130 an hour.
Want to hire Elon Musk’s lawyer? That will be $3,000 an hour [Reuters]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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