Want to hire Elon Musk’s lawyer? That will be US$3,000 an hour

Elon Musk speaks Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

A leading attorney for billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk and embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams now has a standard billing rate of US$3,000 an hour, placing him on the top shelf among even the priciest of Manhattan lawyers.

Alex Spiro, known for his high-profile clientele and relentless litigation style, is among a small group of lawyers at his law firm now billing the $3,000 rate, according to a source familiar with the firm’s billing practices.

Spiro’s firm, 1,000-lawyer Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, disclosed a range of new billing rates in court filings in recent days. The source said the top rate applies to Spiro and to William Burck, the firm’s global co-managing partner.

Top rates for the most in-demand U.S. lawyers have skyrocketed in recent years, with the most senior partners regularly charging more than $2,000 an hour and commanding millions of dollars in annual pay.

Law firms sometimes tailor individual rates for clients or apply discounts. It was unclear how much Spiro or Burck are charging specific clients.

A spokesperson for Los Angeles-founded Quinn Emanuel declined to comment. In addition to Musk and Adams, the firm’s clients include Alphabet’s Google. In January, the Trump Organization said it had hired Burck as an outside ethics adviser. Spokespeople for Musk, Adams and the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Spiro has represented Musk in several lawsuits, including defamation and shareholder cases and litigation brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Spiro is currently defending Adams against criminal allegations that the mayor took bribes from Turkish officials. Adams has pleaded not guilty.

Burck, a longtime Republican insider, has defended Trump’s former political strategist Steve Bannon.

Rates on the rise

Quinn Emanuel’s $3,000 top rate marks a milestone for leading U.S. law firms as lawyers' hourly fees continue to soar.

Law firms routinely raise their rates each year, and top rates at some of the largest U.S. firms have pushed past $2,500 an hour or higher in recent years, court records show.

Quinn Emanuel said in its court filings that its partners now bill between $1,860 and $3,000 an hour. It said it will charge between $1,775 and $2,725 an hour for “of counsel” attorneys at the firm, and between $1,035 and $1,665 for associates.

Billing rate increases helped drive growing revenue and profits for U.S. law firms in 2024, Wells Fargo’s Legal Specialty Group said in a recent report.

Clients have been willing to accept “dramatic increases” in rates, according to a report last month by the Thomson Reuters Institute and the Georgetown Law Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession. The institute and Reuters share the same parent company, Thomson Reuters.

Court records show top rates at Quinn Emanuel have grown about 34 per cent since 2022, when partners billed up to $2,130 an hour.

Quinn Emanuel disclosed last year that it earned more than $2 billion in revenue in 2023, according to industry publication The American Lawyer.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and Leslie Adler)