{"id":166440,"date":"2026-10-29T16:04:05","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T00:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/29\/the-55-year-old-litigation-giant-that-was-undone-by-its-own-billing-bet\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T16:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T00:04:05","slug":"the-55-year-old-litigation-giant-that-was-undone-by-its-own-billing-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/29\/the-55-year-old-litigation-giant-that-was-undone-by-its-own-billing-bet\/","title":{"rendered":"The 55-Year-Old Litigation Giant That Was Undone By Its Own Billing Bet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. Note:<\/span> Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This 55-year-old Washington powerhouse \u2014 a titan of antitrust and patent litigation \u2014 made a bold wager in the late 2000s, shifting much of its work onto contingency and other \u201calternative\u201d fee deals instead of the billable hour. When those big-case paydays didn\u2019t arrive on schedule, cash ran short, its lenders grew nervous, and partners fled en masse (most of them to a single rival). It voted to dissolve in March 2011 and tumbled into bankruptcy \u2014 and its own chairman pinned the blame on the very fee experiment the firm had championed. Name the firm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hint: Its chairman, Robert Ruyak, blamed the firm\u2019s embrace of alternative fee arrangements for its downfall \u2014 then, months later, landed at Winston & Strawn, the very firm that had scooped up most of his former partners. Its name lent itself to an unforgettable run of ATL headline puns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

See the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post The 55-Year-Old Litigation Giant That Was Undone By Its Own Billing Bet<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t(Image via Getty)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This 55-year-old Washington powerhouse \u2014 a titan of antitrust and patent litigation \u2014 made a bold wager in the late 2000s, shifting much of its work onto contingency and other \u201calternative\u201d fee deals instead of the billable hour. When those big-case paydays didn\u2019t arrive on schedule, cash ran short, its lenders grew nervous, and partners fled en masse (most of them to a single rival). It voted to dissolve in March 2011 and tumbled into bankruptcy \u2014 and its own chairman pinned the blame on the very fee experiment the firm had championed. Name the firm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hint: Its chairman, Robert Ruyak, blamed the firm\u2019s embrace of alternative fee arrangements for its downfall \u2014 then, months later, landed at Winston & Strawn, the very firm that had scooped up most of his former partners. Its name lent itself to an unforgettable run of ATL headline puns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

See the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

1<\/strong> 2<\/a>Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! This 55-year-old Washington powerhouse \u2014 a titan of antitrust and patent litigation \u2014 made a bold wager in the late 2000s, shifting much of its work onto contingency and other \u201calternative\u201d fee deals instead of the billable hour. When those big-case paydays didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":166441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}