Previously on Lawyers Gone Wild: On Wednesday, we heard from Beth DeMerchant, the Torys lawyer whose advice contradicted that of Bud Rogers, the Cravath lawyer whose advice contradicted that of Darren Sukonick, the previous Torys lawyer. On Thursday, we heard from Paul Saunders, the Cravath lawyer whose advice contradicted that of Beth DeMerchant, the Torys lawyers whose advice contradicted that of Bud Rogers, the previous Cravath lawyer whose advice contradicted, etc.

One of the dangers for Conrad Black when this thing started was that every sum of money mentioned in the case had at least six zeroes on the end, and, if you couldn’t persuade them to convict on anything else, the jury might settle for hanging him on the grounds of guilty of being rich. But this week the big bucks are all with the witnesses. 

“How much do you bill?” defence counsel Michael Schachter asked Mr Saunders, who’s one of New York’s hottest litigation lawyers.

“I don’t know,” he said blandly. 

“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it?” suggested Mr Schachter.

“I actually don’t know,” repeated Mr Saunders. 

Unlike New York’s hottest lawyer, Toronto’s coldest lawyer was more forthcoming. Asked how much she’d earned in the year 2000, Beth DeMerchant said somewhere between $600,000 and $900,000.  What’s a quarter-million here or there? Her firm Torys had billed Hollinger two to three million on the CanWest deal in addition to their regular two to four million a year. Ms DeMerchant’s schlub of an understudy, Mr Sukonick, earned over 50 grand from the Hollinger deal in the month of October 2000 alone.

I would have gladly taken the witness box myself at that point. As I understand events at Hollinger seven years ago, lawyer Darren Sukonick was getting 50 thousand bucks for telling lawyer Peter Atkinson he could take the non-compete fee without disclosing it while lawyer Bud Rodgers got a hundred grand for telling Atkinson he had to disclose it so lawyer Beth DeMerchant got a quarter-mil to draft a corrective disclosure after lawyer Paul Saunders got 400 grand for suggesting that if they didn’t disclose it shareholders might hire a lawyer and sue. And if the lawyer they hired was him that could get expensive. Meanwhile, yours truly was filling up pages and pages of Hollinger’s National Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post, Spectator, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, etc, day in day out for a grand total of seventeen shillings and thruppence ha’penny a week. What a loser. If I was going to go into the newspaper business all over again, I’d be the lawyer who advises the paper to fire me and free up more money for legal fees.