FTX Bankruptcy Special Counsel, Advisers Bill $38M for January.

FTX’s bankruptcy proceeding has teams of lawyers, investment bankers, consultants, and financial advisers working on the case.

The army of professionals working on the FTX bankruptcy case has billed a collective $38 million plus expenses for the month of January, according to court record

Bankruptcy administrators have retained law firm Sullivan & Cromwell as counsel. They have also retained Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan as well as Landis Rath & Cobb to act as special counsel for the proceedings.

Consultancy AlixPartners was retained to primarily conduct forensic analysis on DeFi products and tokens in FTX’s possession.

Meanwhile, the financial services firms Alvarez & Marsal as well as Perella Weinberg Partners were retained to sort through FTX’s accounting records and determine which assets it can sell.

According to court filings Sullivan & Cromwell billed $16.8 million for January while Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan billed $1.4 million, and Landis Rath & Cobb billed $663,995.

Collectively the three firms have over 180 lawyers assigned to the case and over 50 non-lawyer staff such as paralegals.

Court filings show that Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers and staff billed a total of 14,569 hours for January. The largest project Sullivan & Cromwell worked on was discovery, followed by asset disposition and asset analysis and recovery.

Initially, the U.S. Department of Justice had objected to FTX hiring Sullivan & Cromwell, claiming potential conflicts of interest. Sam Bankman-Fried also objected to bankruptcy administrators hiring the firm, claiming that the law Firm’s staff had pressured him into filing for bankruptcy in November. In late January,the firm was approved by a Delaware bankruptcy court judge to continue to represent FTX.

In early February, Sullivan & Cromwell submitted a bill for 7.5$ million for the first 19 days of bankruptcy work after FTX filed in November.

The majority of billed time for Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan was spent on Asset Analysis and Recovery as well as Avoidance Action – legalese for attempts to undoCertain  transaction that the debtor engaged in before bankruptcy.