Lawyers and advisors in FTX bankruptcy have billed nearly $20 million for 51 days of work

cnbc.com:

FTX's top bankruptcy, legal and financial advisors have billed the company more than $19.6 million in fees for work done in 2022, according to Tuesday bankruptcy court filings. More than $10 million of that was for work done in November 2022 as Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire entered bankruptcy protection in Delaware.

The firms will initially only be paid a little over $15.5 million, or 80% of the value of their work, under a court-ordered interim compensation plan.

The law firms that billed FTX are Sullivan & Cromwell, Landis Rath & Cobb, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Professional advisor Alvarez & Marsal and financial advisor AlixPartners also billed the company.

Some of the work the firms billed for involved taking meetings with other companies that also were billing FTX for their time or corresponding with former and current executives, including Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried's hedge fund, Alameda Research.

Landis Rath & Cobb and Sullivan & Cromwell, FTX's primary legal firms, billed the company a combined $10.7 million for more than 8,400 hours of work. Landis Rath & Cobb billed $1.16 million for work done between Nov. 11 and Nov. 30.

Sullivan & Cromwell, a target for both lawmakers and Bankman-Fried over the firm's pre-petition work with FTX, sought more than $9.5 million in compensation for over 6,500 billable hours in the period between Nov. 12 and Nov. 30. Roughly half of those billable hours, totaling more than $4.8 million, were for the work of partners, who typically charge the highest hourly rate.

Sullivan & Cromwell assigned more than two dozen partners to FTX's case, according to the filings. Jim Bromley, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and a lead attorney on the case,