Non-Profit Lawyers 2

 Taking a second look at non-profit eco-lawyers. The lurid details next. Yesterday we talked with Karen Budd-Falen lawyer/rancher from Cheyenne who claimed that a legion of supposedly non-profit law firms were making fat livings by suing the government on agri-relevant ecological and environmental issues and charging exorbitant legal fees. Here’s more of that conversation: “They’re stopping projects by default. Not with the judge saying the project is bad, but with the judge saying Federal Government you didn’t jump through enough hoops, you can’t do the project till you jump through enough hoops, but by the time the government gets around to doing that, the project sponsor, the cattleman, the feedlot producer, whatever, they’ve run out of money, they don’t have any place to put their cows in the meantime, they’ve lost their crop for the year, whatever the problem is, but there’s no decision on the merit saying you can’t do this and then the government awards them attorney’s fees because they haven’t done enough paper. For one case that lasted 15 months in the District of California they are requesting attorneys fees of $650/hr. $650/hr? Johnny Cochran didn’t make that. Well I can tell you the ranchers I represent can’t pay $650/hr. And they’re requesting $500,000 in attorney’s fees for one court case.”

Do you wonder why the Federal Government is broke?