It’s no secret that the wave of insolvencies linked to the global economic downturn in 2008 has sparked a backlash over fees charged by lawyers in big corporate bankruptcy cases.
But when Clifford White III, director of the Justice Department’s U.S. Trustees Program (USTP), held a June 4 public meeting to discuss proposals for more transparent billing and budget statements by bankruptcy counsel, he encountered some resistance from a not-so-unlikely source: lawyers opposed to the push for more detailed fee applications in cases where the debtor has combined assets and liabilities of more than $50 million.
