… to be sure, but the University of Michigan — which pays millions to a negligent president and many more millions to Rich Rodriguez, an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, crooked football coach — seems to be on an even faster schedule than that. Every moment it spins out some new way to get taken.
The latest involves $350 an hour legal fees:
The NCAA investigation into Michigan’s football program has cost the university nearly half million dollars so far, and expenses continue to mount.
According to invoices from the law firm Lightfoot, Franklin and White released this week as part of an open-records request, Michigan has paid $446,951 in legal fees and other expenses since contracting attorney Gene Marsh and others to handle its internal investigation last September.
The payments are for services rendered through April, and do not include a busy May, when the university released its findings and self-imposed penalties in response to the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations.
… Michigan, in a letter dated Sept. 15, 2009, agreed to pay … the former head of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, $350 an hour to lead its investigation. Other attorneys were billed at $300, and paralegals $130 an hour…
Check out the article’s comment thread if you want a sense of the reality on the ground. If UM were a public university in a financially distressed state, this would be a real scandal.
July 6th, 2010 at 4:44AM
Sounds lowish, actually. Top law firms bill that for associates — partners cost more.
July 6th, 2010 at 7:13AM
True, Mr Punch, in absolute terms. But the article goes on to point out how much more UM is paying than other schools who’ve recently had similar problems… And… doesn’t UM have in-house lawyers galore? Even if they had none that specialized in NCAA violations, you’d think that as soon as they hired Rodriguez they’d have gotten some.