Not everyone's a winner in Elon Musk's decision to go through with the Twitter deal
Dozens of lawyers who were preparing to spar at a trial over whether the world's richest person could walk away from the Twitter deal -- and stood to earn millions of dollars doing it - are set to lose out on millions.
More than 70 lawyers were admitted to Delaware Chancery Court to represent various parties in the case -- about 30 for Twitter, most of them from Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, the most profitable firm in the country, and about 20 for Musk from firms including Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.
“With all the lawyers in the case and the potential for other litigation to spin out of this, such as investor suits, I could see the total legal fees reaching $1 billion,” said John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who teaches about M&A disputes. A few other cases have reached or exceeded the billion-dollar mark in fees, Coffee said in an interview before Musk revived his bid to buy Twitter, so the amount wouldn't be historic, but still significant.
Even without a trial, lawyers have already racked up fees sending out dozens of subpoenas to witnesses that might have been called to the stand by one side or the other.
“They ought to give Elon Musk some kind of award for being the man who has done the most recently to ensure the economic health of the legal profession,” Coffee said.
Since Musk is involved in a myriad of businesses, he's created some conflict-of-interest problems among lawyers over the years.
In the Twitter fight, both Musk's main Delaware lawyers from Skadden Arps and Twitter's lead firm, Wachtell, had to hire so-called conflict counsel to put out subpoenas to parties they'd represented in the past, according to court filings. For the Musk
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