Dead Ringer by Lisa Scottoline

thanks so much! You’re the best!” Bennie said.
    She hung up before he could change his mind.

5
    It took only a weekend to transform the firm’s large conference room into a war room. Documents from St. Amien & Fils, Xeroxed cases, and scribbled notes cluttered its long walnut table, law books sat stacked on its matching chairs, and a modern oak credenza overflowed with empty lo mein containers and a coffeemaker brewing on an endless loop. Windows lined the north wall, dark squares of shiny onyx, now that it was well past eight o’clock at night, and four weary lawyers ringed the table.
    “Well, I understand class-action law better and I almost have a complaint drafted.” Bennie leaned back in her chair, in a blue work shirt and khaki shorts, with her long curly hair twisted into a topknot by a dull pencil. Things were bad when your sole fashion accessory was a Dixon Ticonderoga. “And this fee business is amazing.”
    “How so?” Judy looked up from behind a mountain of open casebooks. Her orange T-shirt was wrinkled, and the stubby strands of her candy-coated hair were pinned away from her face by about two hundred clips. Her eyes had dark circles around them but came to life when she spoke. “You mean the amounts?”
    “Yes. Under the lodestar approach, lead counsel can charge five to six times more than the hourly rate for representing the class, because of the benefit bestowed on the class as a whole.” Bennie tried not to drool. “That’s why there is such a battle over who gets to be lead counsel. It should be called the mother lode approach.”
    Anne looked up, next to Bennie. She managed to look fresh and crisp in a white cotton dress, with a coppery French braid running down her back. “What would the fees be in this case, for example?”
    “If there’s sixty million in damages in this case, then we can make twenty percent in fees. That’s more than ten million dollars!” The number took Bennie’s breath away. She’d never thought she could be so mercenary, but being broke can turn a girl. “Thirty percent, which would still be kosher, would yield even more. If we represent the class, we get a ton of new clients, almost automatically, and my head explodes.”
    “Yowza!” Judy said, and Bennie agreed.
    “The hard part is getting to be lead counsel. Lawyers usually decide among themselves who will be lead counsel. It’s called ‘private ordering.’ The lawyer representing the biggest fish generally becomes lead counsel, which I have to believe is us, in St. Amien. And you know another way lead counsel is picked?”
    “I do,” Anne answered, raising her hand like the law student she’d been not long ago. “It’s auction bidding. The qualified law firms submit secret bids on their fees, under seal, and the judge chooses the lowest bidder.”
    Judy looked over. “Are you serious? Lawyers submitting bids, like contractors? That’s absurd! How can a judge choose who should be someone’s lawyer? Whose lawsuit is it anyway?”
    Bennie sipped ice-cold coffee. “It works well for cases like St. Amien’s. It leaves more money for the class and gives lawyers like us, who don’t usually represent class actions, a fighting chance. That’s the rationale, but the Third Circuit found that auction bidding should be used only in special circumstances.”
    “Bidding is commerce, not law.” Judy curled her nose. “The law should be pure, like art. It evolves like a painting, created step by step, until the whole can be seen.”
    Bennie smiled. The associates could be so surprising. They had worked their butts off this weekend, especially Mary, who had screened out the world as she researched her Brandolini case. Yellow, orange, and blue Hi-Liters lay on the table at her side, and she had filled three legal pads with tricolor notes. She was dressed to work in an oxford shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, and wore her tortoiseshell glasses instead of contacts. Bennie