The appointment of a fee examiner to monitor legal bills in Detroit’s chapter 9 case comes in the midst of a push by the Department of Justice to crack down on the perception of bankruptcy as a billing bonanza for attorneys, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Starting Nov. 1, attorneys representing large corporate debtors in chapter 11 will be subject to additional disclosures and rules. Debtors will also face a bigger push to ensure that someone — namely, a fee examiner — is keeping an eye on the meter, which in large bankruptcy cases often runs into the tens of millions of dollars. “It’s something in these larger cases that we think ought to be done with greater frequency,” Clifford J. White III, director of the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees, said Tuesday during an ABI-sponsored webinar yesterday. Mr. White explained the hallmarks of the new fee guidelines that U.S. Trustees will use to evaluate attorney fee requests in bankruptcy courts across the country.
