Seun, I do not know how you concluded, based on cost alone, that we did not do a good job of strategizing how/when to use outside counsel, or that counsel costs were unduly high. To the contrary, significant amounts of (unpaid) time have been spent within the WG on deciding when and what outside counsel should do. Of course, we can always strive to do better, and indeed, adjustments have been made a few times over the course of our work with counsel to refine our methods, and I'm sure adjustments will continue to be made. I actually think we have done a good job all along, and the cost reflects the amount of work that needed to be done. Nothing more. I don't think there's any need to "rewrite history," because that would imply that we failed in some significant respect. I don't think that's the case, and I don't think that the cost alone is any evidence of that. Seun, to further tax your imagination, if I billed for all of my time spent dealing with ICANN matters, it would easily exceed $100,000 a month over the last several months. (In fact, I bill for almost none of my time spent on ICANN matters, but that's beside the point.) That said, I am keenly aware that we all live and work in different economies and that what seems proportionate in one economy may seem disproportionate (high or low) in other economies. (For instance, I noted that a $10 cab ride in Buenos Aires would have cost about $30 in New York City.) Nonetheless, in the economy where this work needs to be done, and for the quality of services that we need, this is not a disproportionate amount. Finally, I would caution us against being unduly timid about using counsel when and where needed, because that is the surest path toward a suboptimal result, which would be a waste of time, effort and money for all of us. Greg On Thu, Jun 25, 2015 at 5:42 PM, Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com> wrote:
With due respect James, I am in no way belittling the work of legal council. I am rather wondering how we as a community recognising this huge cost did not better strategize on how/when to engage external council. The amount that has been spent on all participants of the ccwg and cwg(for remote/physical meetings) would seem to be competing with the total cost of legal advice (perhaps legal would even be more).
The deed has been done and we can't rewrite history. My comment is targeted more on the fact that we need to think of how we engage legal more efficiently going forward.
For the record, when Greg said top notch council are expensive, 500k monthly is just beyond my imagination!
Regards
sent from Google nexus 4 kindly excuse brevity and typos. On 25 Jun 2015 18:23, "James Gannon" <james@cyberinvasion.net> wrote:
Our legal advice has been critical to our process and Sidley have been crucial to our successes. I think we should be thanking them for their service, and yes top notch legal services are not cheap. It is most certainly something that I have no issue with the community exercising its prudence over however lets not limit ourselves in any way to engage with our counsel.
-James
From: <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Seun Ojedeji Date: Thursday 25 June 2015 18:20 To: "accountability-cross-community@icann.org" Subject: [CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: Legal cost reality
Hi,
Over 500k USD a month for legal is sure not how someone like me from developing region would like to see ICANN spend it's resources. It's my hope that this working group Co-Chairs would be sensitive of that fact!
Regards sent from Google nexus 4 kindly excuse brevity and typos. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Seun Ojedeji" <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com> Date: 25 Jun 2015 18:15 Subject: Legal cost reality To: <cwg-stewardship@icann.org> Cc:
Hi,
I hope those who want to always push issues to external legal advice would appreciate the need to be strategic and prudent about this. Over 500,000USD already spent on Sidley is definitely not what we like ICANN to keep spending it's resources on.
Regards
sent from Google nexus 4 kindly excuse brevity and typos.
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