Sidley Austin LLP was retained in March 2015. The payment approved by the Board for USD508,624.98 was for services rendered in March up to 31 March 2015.

It is understood that the work being done by external legal counsel is important to assist the community. I supported the community's request for external counsel at the end of the Public Board Meeting at ICANN 52.

All the Board is asking is that prudence is exercised in ensuring that requests for legal advice are not frivolous given the cost. I believe there are checks in place to ensure this within the CWG and CCWG. It would be good to receive confirmation of this.

On Jun 26, 2015 2:24 AM, "Seun Ojedeji" <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Chuck,

I stand to be corrected, board seemed to imply monthly during their meeting.

Regards
sent from Google nexus 4
kindly excuse brevity and typos.

On 25 Jun 2015 18:55, "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com> wrote:

Sean,

500k to date not per month.

Chuck

Sent via the Samsung GALAXY S® 5, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

-------- Original message --------
From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji@gmail.com>
Date:06/25/2015 5:42 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: James Gannon <james@cyberinvasion.net>
Cc: cwg-stewardship@icann.org
Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] Legal cost reality

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: <cwg-stewardship-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Seun Ojedeji
Date: Thursday 25 June 2015 18:15
To: "cwg-stewardship@icann.org"
Subject: [CWG-Stewardship] Legal cost reality

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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