I admire lawyers. I really do. You have to be a special breed to be one - I know, both I and my wife's x's are lawyers - and the way they can bill clients is breathtaking in its brilliance and forthrightness. A long time ago I had a business that used a big deal firm in Washington - one of those M Street Firms - staid, conservative, expensive and big bucks. Every morning I got a call from one of the lawyers. Hey how are you doing? How are the kids? Did you play golf over the weekend? How did you do? What's for dinner?
The legal bills went to accounting for payment and the retainer and I got the summary at the end of the quarter. Seems we always talked a minimum of 16 minutes. I got billed for an hour even though I didn't call him, he called me. At $350/hr this was 20 grand worth of chitchat and I got mad about it. I called him and told him to knock it off. I got a bill for $350 for my phone call to him and then another 22 hours of billing (I'm not joking) for research into the matter raised by the client.
Now this Picard fella is making a bundle. The law firms associated with all this mess are making oil company type profits. People are out in the streets who trusted Madoff - and I mean real hardships not just I lost a little money but I lost everything types - and the lawyers are going to pocket $1.2 billion.
Perhaps they could send some coupons to the senior citizen's all you can eat buffet in Palm Beach and Boca Raton for the 1000 or so there who are now without a penny. But that wouldn't be lawyerly.