Crain's Chicago Business reports:
Chicago has hired two outside law firms to represent the city and the Chicago Police Department in the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights investigation into policing practices.Rahm Emanuel of Freddie Mac hires the one woman disaster show, Jamie Gorelick of Fannie Mae fame ! (GSE thugs find another way to rape taxpayers). No matter what Chicago Police are accused of , all of their sins combined can't compare to incomparable Jamie Gorelick who amazingly still has a law license and somehow didn't go to jail for Fannie Mae fraud (who could forget that Jamie Gorelick and Eric Holder were good friends? ) Will Jamie Gorelick pull a "Fannie Mae" on Chicago taxpayers??? Will Jamie's legal bill for Chicago taxpayers shatter the boldest of imaginations? Stay tuned. She didn't earn the title "The Mistress of Disaster" by affirmative action, but old fashioned hard work. Jamie Gorelick: the wrong side of history.
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr will lead the effort, supported by the Chicago office of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, said Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton, the city's top lawyer. Wilmer Hale is one of the 25 largest firms in the country and is representing Baltimore in that city's investigation by the Justice Department. The Washington D.C. firm has 14 offices but no presence in Chicago.
Billing rates for lawyers working on the case will range from $290 to $1,200. It's too early to project what the total bill will be, but hiring a firm that already has expertise in this area sidesteps a “penny wise, pound foolish” approach that trades lower rates for a longer process, Patton said.
"I don't want to suggest there's no firm in Chicago that could not play that role,” he said. “But on something like this, there's just no substitute for having experience in doing it, and just the credibility of being somebody that the folks on the other side know. … A lot of times getting the right representation will save you money in the long run because you're not spinning your wheels going down the wrong alley."
Chicago is hiring the same lead partner as Baltimore: Jamie Gorelick, chair of Wilmer Hale's regulatory and government affairs practice, who knows Mayor Rahm Emanuel from the years they both worked in the Clinton Administration. She was deputy attorney general between 1994 and 1997 and before that general counsel for the Defense Department. Later, she became vice chairwoman at mortgage lender Fannie Mae. She's no stranger to high-profile investigations: before Baltimore, she represented Puerto Rico's police department when the feds investigated civil rights abuses there and Duke University when players on its lacrosse team were accused of rape.
