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The lawyers who raked in more than $200 million for MF Global’s investors are now seeking their own payday, the Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Blog reported yesterday. Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP and Bleichmar Fonti Tountas & Auld LLP are seeking a total of $42.1 million — $38.8 million in fees and $3.3 million in expenses — for their work leading the charge in shareholder litigation against the failed brokerage, its former officials, its auditor and others. The lawsuit claimed that MF Global misled investors about its business and financial results leading up to the its 2011 collapse. Officials have disputed wrongdoing in connection with the brokerage firm’s demise.

The federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis questioned the need for more legal and other professionals to resolve the case during a court hearing yesterday, Minnesota Public Radio reported. The legal bill for the bankruptcy is already about $3.6 million. Now, the archdiocese wants a firm hired to represent sex abuse victims who might file claims against the church in the future. The estimated cost is $150,000. About 400 people filed abuse claims by an August deadline, but the archdiocese says some people could still come forward with legally viable claims of abuse that occurred before the church's bankruptcy filing and could argue they were not subject to the August cutoff. Russell Roten, an attorney representing insurers, said that a future claims representative would add some finality to the case by contemplating possible claims and seeing that funds are set aside to provide compensation. Read more.

A panel at ABI’s Winter Leadership Conference will provide further perspectives on issues surrounding diocesan bankruptcies. Click here to register for the conference. Early bird rate expires today! 

A group representing victims of a deadly 2012 meningitis outbreak has sticker shock over the bill submitted by a bankruptcy trustee who tracked down funds to pay them, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The plaintiffs' steering committee, which represents 322 claimants in a multidistrict case against New England Compounding Center, is asking a bankruptcy court to write down the $3.75 million fee for the services of trustee Paul D. Moore and his law firm Duane Morris LLP , saying that no one agreed to pay so much. For three years, Moore has served as the bankruptcy trustee administering the chapter 11 case of NECC, a compounding pharmacy that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said caused the death of at least 64 people and sickened more than 750 others with tainted steroid injections.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Baker Botts v. Asarco, which held that Section 330 of the Bankruptcy Code does not itself allow for the reimbursement for time spent defending those fees has drawn a number of criticisms, according to a commentary today by Prof. Stephen Lubben in the New York Times DealBook blog. The opinion does suggest that the Supreme Court does not really understand the dynamics of large chapter 11 cases as the “traditional rule” favored in the opinion arises in traditional litigation, but a chapter 11 case is not traditional litigation, according to Lubben. In response to the court’s opinion, firms have begun to take the obvious and understandable step of putting these “fees for fees” into their retention agreements. Whether that is permissible is the subject of litigation, including two cases pending in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court. Read the full commentary.

For more on the Baker Botts ruling and retention agreements, be sure to register for the October 5 abiLIVE webinar titled “Does it Pay to Be a Bankruptcy Lawyer Anymore? Baker Botts LLP v. ASARCO LLC.”