Soak the Rich: Docs Show Warren Charged $675/Hr in Bankruptcy Case

Newly revealed documents show Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren charged $675 an hour for legal services she provided to a committee handling the 2001 bankruptcy case of GAF Materials Corporation:

Warren made five requests for compensation for services rendered May 2002 through January 2003, totalling $14,175, for “Professional Legal Services” which were described in detail in billing records attached to the requests, and included consultation and review of various motions.

Warren made the following or substantially identical representations to the Court in each of the fee applications (emphasis mine):

Professor Warren has maintained detailed records of the time spent in the rendition of professional services for the Committee during the Application Period. Attached hereto as Exhibit A and incorporated herein by reference is a true and correct copy of the monthly billing statement prepared for the services rendered in this case by Professor Warren (the “Billing Statement”). The Billing Statement is in the same form regularly used by Professor Warren to bill her clients for services rendered and includes the date that the services were rendered, a detailed, contemporaneous narrative description of the services, the amount of time spent for each service.

Ms. Warren’s $675 an hour standard rate is outlined on page 5 of the documents associated with the case, which can be seen here.

Blogger William Jacobson uses the fee rate to argue Warren maintained a thriving legal practice out of her Cambridge, Massachusetts office but has never been licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

Only Warren knows the extent of her private law practice, and she refuses to make a full disclosure.

The issue is not just whether Warren was the champion of the poor, as she claims, but whether she practiced law from her Cambridge office without having the necessary Massachusetts attorney license required when one maintains an “office for the practice of law” or maintains any other “systematic and continuous precense in [Massachusetts] for the practice of law.”