Dear Co-Chairs, Never mind that the colleague may want to go back and read my initial postings or contributions on the F2F where this was discussed, but if we want to use our own outside counsel that's what it takes. Billable Hours are Billable Hours. And as I trust Jones-Day and the ICANN in-house legal staff as far as I can throw them, I am fully in agreement with instructing outside counsel They have of course not been asked to most important question, but from what I read the stuff they have done was good. I worry about waste as much as the next African, but it's not as if ICANN doesn't have the money or would put it to better use if we didn't instruct counsel. greetings, el On 2015-06-25 18:42 , Seun Ojedeji 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 <mailto: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 <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org>> on behalf of Seun Ojedeji Date: Thursday 25 June 2015 18:20 To: "accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto: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 <mailto:seun.ojedeji@gmail.com>> Date: 25 Jun 2015 18:15 Subject: Legal cost reality To: <cwg-stewardship@icann.org <mailto: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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