Biglaw

Britney's New Lawyer Calls Out Biglaw Firm In Bid To End Conservatorship

People often overreact to Biglaw bills, but these do raise eyebrows.

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(Photo by Michelangelo Di Battista/Sony/RCA via Getty Images)

After years locked in a conservatorship, Britney Spears has a new lawyer and an opportunity to get out of the arrangement that see says leaves her with a meager stipend and involuntarily stuck on birth control. Mathew Rosengart, a former Souter clerk from the justice’s days on the New Hampshire bench, represents Britney in the fight now and just filed a 120-page petition to remove her father as sole conservator.

The petition alleges Jamie Spears paid himself $16,000 a month — more than Britney is allowed to make — and took percentages from Britney’s deals as if he were a manager or agent, despite performing neither of these roles.

But mixed in among the series of shocking allegations of financial abuse are some jabs aimed directly at Biglaw.

From NPR:

Additionally, Rosengart argues, Mr. Spears has brought in multiple expensive teams for his own legal representation — which Britney Spears has ultimately paid for. One such firm, Holland & Knight, has charged the estate over $1.3 million just from Oct. 2020 to June 2021 to represent Mr. Spears in litigation matters. Until earlier this month, Ms. Spears was only represented by one court-appointed attorney.

Holland & Knight’s involvement has made headlines before. Back in April, the firm went to court to defend its fees from an objection lodged by Britney’s mother. We rarely question the propriety of Biglaw fees — indeed, the fee request reflected hourly rates between $500-$900/hour which isn’t out of the ordinary — but it certainly feels like overkill to amass over a million in fees while sparring with a court-appointed attorney who, it appears, failed to inform Britney that she even had the right to challenge the conservatorship.

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Indeed, most of that fee dump didn’t even involve legal services. According to the conservatorship request, the latest tranche of fees mostly paid for the Holland & Knight communications team having to respond to media inquiries over the nature of the conservatorship.

“This Conservatorship has been the subject of increasingly intense media scrutiny both in traditional news media as well as on social media and also documentary films,” Jamie’s court documents read, referencing fans’ #FreeBritney campaign and the New York Times documentary “Framing Britney Spears,” which premiered in February.

“H&K has assisted Mr. Spears in dealing with domestic and global media matters relating to the Conservatorship in order to maintain the privacy of the Conservatee and for the protection of the Estate from inappropriate and/or unwarranted intrusion.”

Apparently, H&K wants us to know that they wouldn’t be spending this much of her money if we’d all stop asking questions about why a 39-year-old woman is barred from removing her own IUD. The irony, of course, is that the communication team charged with putting a happy face on the conservatorship managed to make its own bills a negative headline in the upcoming legal battle. Hopefully it’s not too expensive for them to run damage control on that.

Britney Spears’ Lawyer Files To Have Her Father Removed From Controlling Her Finances [NPR]

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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