*

Clement has his hands full working for Trump opponents,

Elon

Musk and others

*

Ropes & Gray bucks the two-tier partnership trend

*

Utah splits with Motley Rice in opioid litigation

By Mike Scarcella, Sara Merken and David Thomas

Oct 23 (Reuters) - (Billable Hours is Reuters' weekly

report on lawyers and money. Please send tips or suggestions to

[email protected].)

Paul Clement and his small law firm are stacking up marquee

cases like few other lawyers right now.

Clement, a Republican-appointed former U.S. solicitor

general and top appellate lawyer, is representing billionaire

Elon Musk's companies and other corporate clients in high-stakes

business cases. He's also bringing conservative legal bona fides

to a growing number of cases challenging moves by U.S. President

Donald Trump.

He's on the team representing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook

in a major fight at the Supreme Court over Trump's effort to

oust her, and defending U.S. judges in Maryland in an unusual

lawsuit brought against them by the U.S. Justice Department over

immigration. He is headlining the legal team for prominent law

firm WilmerHale, which won a court order blocking the Trump

administration's punishing executive order, and also helping

defend a state judge targeted by the administration in an

immigration case.

For Musk, Clement is part of a team defending Tesla in federal

court in wrongful death litigation, and representing X Corp in a

battle with watchdog Media Matters. In a few weeks, he'll be at

the U.S. Supreme Court to argue for Sony Music in a

billion-dollar copyright case and for hedge fund Saba Capital in

a fight over shareholder rights.

Reached for comment, the 1992 Harvard Law grad said he was

traveling to appear on Thursday before the Cincinnati-based 6th

Circuit, where he's arguing for law firms representing

plaintiffs in litigation over the 2023 train derailment and

chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio.

Clement said he could connect more after things "calm down a

bit." He stressed that his whole 20-lawyer firm, Clement &

Murphy, is keeping busy. He pointed to his partner Erin Murphy,

who recently argued four appellate court cases - including one

full-court hearing - in the span of a month.

Clement is most recognized for his Supreme Court advocacy,

having argued more than 100 cases before the justices. He served

as solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.

He is also known for leaving two large, prominent law firms to

represent interests that the firms chose not to defend. Most

recently, he departed law firm Kirkland & Ellis in 2022 after it

said it would no longer represent clients in pro-gun rights

cases.

Despite his firm's small size, Clement still commands top rates.

In 2023, he was billing at $2,350 an hour, court records show.

His rate increased this year to $2,650 an hour, not far behind

the $3,000 that some attorneys at one of his clients - law firm

Quinn Emanuel - are now charging.

Clement is currently defending Quinn Emanuel in a federal

appeals court after a judge held the law firm in contempt for

allegedly failing to comply with a court order in a $481 million

patent case.

He was supposed to argue that appeal in December, but the

Supreme Court threw a wrench into those plans.

The high court's new argument calendar created a timing

conflict - Clement is due to argue the Sony ( SONY ) and Saba Capital

cases in the first two weeks of December. This week he asked the

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to push back its

hearing "so that Quinn Emanuel can be represented by its counsel

of choice at oral argument."

-- Ropes & Gray is keeping its one-tier partnership,

maintaining a structure in which all its partners have an

ownership stake even as its peers have increasingly abandoned

that traditional model and introduced a second, non-equity

partner level.

Many U.S. law firms internally designate some partners as

non-equity or income partners. The move can help retain and

attract lawyers with the clout and higher compensation

associated with the partner title while potentially increasing

profits for equity partners. Non-equity partners typically earn

less than full equity partners, whose compensation is tied

directly to firm profits.

Ropes & Gray chair Julie Jones said the firm did a "very

deep data and analytic dive into the topic" since the beginning

of the year, weighing factors such as the firm's rate of

promotion to partnership, talent wins and losses, the impact of

its partnership structure on clients, and lessons from peers

with two-tier structures.

There is no one size fits all approach, Jones said. She said

the firm decided to not "just go with an instinct that the

market's moving in one direction, that's the path you have to or

should take."

Competitor firms such as Debevoise & Plimpton, Cleary Gottlieb,

WilmerHale and Paul Weiss have added non-equity partner tiers

since last year, leaving a small number of major U.S. firms with

single-tier partnerships.

Firms have also been growing their income partner ranks. Income

partner headcount grew at an average annual rate of 6% between

2018 and 2023, while equity partner headcount across firms

surveyed increased at a rate of .6% over those years, according

to a 2024 report from Citigroup's Citi Global Wealth at Work Law

Firm Group and Hildebrandt Consulting.

-- Motley Rice on Wednesday said it was withdrawing as

counsel to the state of Utah in an opioid lawsuit, days after

Utah Attorney General Derek Brown's office said it had

terminated its contract with the national plaintiffs firm.

Motley Rice had been representing Utah in a one-year-old

lawsuit against pharmacy benefit managers OptumRx and Express

Scripts that alleged they helped foment the U.S. opioid crisis

by deliberately facilitating the increased sale and consumption

of such drugs.

Chief Deputy Utah Attorney General Daniel Burton last week

told Motley Rice in a letter obtained by Reuters that the office

was terminating its contract with the firm "without cause."

Motley Rice's contract was terminated "pursuant to the best

interest of the state," a spokesperson for Brown's office said.

Burton's letter to Motley Rice said the office intends to

hire new counsel.

Motley Rice and the Utah attorney general's office did not say

what led to the firm being fired. In August, OptumRx asked a

federal magistrate judge to prohibit Motley Rice from

representing Utah, arguing that the firm had obtained

confidential information about its operations through its work

for other public entities in other investigations.

OptumRx, which manages pharmacy benefits for UnitedHealth ( UNH ),

did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

UnitedHealth ( UNH ) and Cigna ( CI ), which owns Express Scripts, also did not

immediately respond to comment requests.

OptumRx and Express Scripts have said that all the claims

against them are without merit.

In a statement to Reuters, Motley Rice called OptumRx's

arguments "meritless" and defended its record litigating major

cases on behalf of U.S. states and others, saying it has "helped

deliver justice to communities that have been harmed by Big

Tobacco, opioids, asbestos, terrorism, human trafficking, and

more."

Utah and Motley Rice in September defended the firm's work

for the state in court filings, noting that OptumRx has tried

unsuccessfully at least six other times in other opioid lawsuits

to get Motley Rice disqualified.

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