Courts and Crimes
A judge declared that the actor, who reached a mutual settlement to dismiss It Ends With Us litigation, would have to pay the actress’ legal fees
A judge decided earlier this month that Justin Baldoni must pay Blake Lively’s legal fees, now that the stars of It Ends With Us have dropped their litigation against each another. Now, he’s getting the bill. A legal filing obtained by Rolling Stone reveals that Lively claims she’s entitled to a little more than $8 million. Specifically, Lively wants Baldoni to pay “reasonable” attorney fees totaling $7,495,526.87 and additional costs that come to $539,514.01.
It turns out lawyering is expensive, as the filing’s charts, tables, footnotes, exhibits, and appendixes explain (and yes, because they’re lawyers, they billed for the time they spent creating the filing and its miscellany). Apparently Baldoni is getting something of a deal, since the filing notes “all time billed to Lively reflects 10 and 15 percent discounts from [her legal teams Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips’] standard rates.” It seems like the only winners after all this litigation are the lawyers.
Michael J. Gottlieb, a partner in Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, disclosed in a declaration that his standard hourly rate was $2,795 as of the fourth quarter of 2025, but he cut Lively a deal and charged her only $2,187 an hour. The 224 hours of work he performed for Lively, he said, was worth $457,000 in fees. Gottlieb’s declaration goes lawyer by lawyer, listing their rates, with a chart at the end showing that the median rate for all lawyers was $1,450 per hour.
