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The National Association of Realtors has replaced its outside legal counsel in two bombshell commission suits with a law firm that charges up to $3,000 an hour.
Last week, attorneys for Cooley LLP, a global law firm based in Palo Alto, California, informed courts in Missouri and Illinois that they were withdrawing from the antitrust cases known as Gibson and Moehrl and that NAR would now be represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, a Los Angeles-based business litigation firm with more than 1,200 attorneys.
Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan also represents Elon Musk and New York Mayor Eric Adams. According to a February 2025 Reuters article, Quinn Emanuel said in court filings that its partners currently bill between $1,860 and $3,000 an hour. This is up about 34 percent since 2022, when partners charged up to $2,130 an hour.
“Quinn Emanuel’s $3,000 top rate marks a milestone for leading U.S. law firms as lawyers’ hourly fees continue to soar,” Reuters said.
The average hourly rate for partners at large firms was $1,114, according to an October 2024 Reuters article.
It is unclear how much Cooley charges NAR per hour, but at least one top Cooley partner charged $1,250 in 2021, according to Reuters.
In 2023, NAR paid Cooley $12.47 million, according to the trade group’s latest nonprofit tax filing. The firm was NAR’s second-most highly compensated independent contractor that year, after PR firm Havas Media Group.
NAR came under fire for its spending last year in the wake of its $418 million antitrust settlement and allegations it showered staff and volunteer leaders with perks while funding partisan groups through one of its nonprofits. Since then, NAR says it has made tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts.
Mike Bonanno
The attorney that replaced Cooley’s lawyers in the Gibson and Moehrl cases is Michael D. Bonanno, a partner at Quinn Emanuel and chair of its antitrust investigations practice. Bonanno has also represented NAR in other antitrust cases, including those brought by Top Agent Network, ThePLS.com, REX, homebuyer Judah Leeder (later, Mya Batton), and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Bill Burck
While it is unclear what Quinn Emanuel is billing NAR for Bonanno’s services, the Reuters article specifically names two attorneys that charge the top $3,000 rate: Alex Spiro and William Burck, the firm’s global co-managing partner. Burck has represented NAR for years in litigation with the U.S. Department of Justice, Top Agent Network, and ThePLS.com.
Burck is currently representing NAR in one of the original bombshell commission cases known as Sitzer | Burnett as well as in defending NAR’s nationwide antitrust settlement in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Cooley, which has been representing NAR since at least 2022, remains one of the law firms listed as counsel for NAR in Sitzer | Burnett and in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
NAR declined to comment on why it terminated Cooley as its outside counsel in some of its cases and declined to say why or who made the decision to replace Cooley with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. NAR also declined to comment on Cooley’s work defending NAR against commission-related lawsuits or on how much it is paying Quinn Emanuel.
Ethan Glass | Attorney for NAR
Ethan Glass, NAR’s lead counsel at Cooley, did not respond to a request for comment. Glass represented NAR at the October 2023 Sitzer | Burnett trial that NAR lost.
Glass is now also counsel for Compass in its lawsuit against Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) over policies prohibiting office exclusives. That complaint, filed at the end of April, has received criticism from real estate industry lawyers for poor execution.
Tanya Monestier, a University at Buffalo contract law professor that has slammed NAR’s settlement, said she wasn’t commenting on the merits of the complaint, but that the legal filing itself was “light on law and heavy on posturing.”
“I hate to say it, but it reads like a cross between a press release for [Compass’s] 3-phase marketing plan and a whiny diatribe by a brokerage that didn’t get its way,” Monestier wrote on LinkedIn.
“Also strange that NAR’s attorney is now representing Compass.”
Real estate consultant and attorney Rob Hahn had similar feedback.
“With all due respect and apologies to Ethan Glass, the new lawyer for Compass, and for his law firm Cooley (which is one of the top law firms in the world) … I have to say this might be one of the worst drafted and poorly written complaints I have seen in quite some time,” Hahn wrote in his Substack.
“The primary sin is that the Complaint almost reads like a brochure for Compass and its ‘Three-Phased Price Discovery and Marketing Strategy’ rather than a legal complaint alleging antitrust injury.”
Hahn also said “a critical weakness” of the complaint is that it says Compass was injured because its Private Exclusives program threatened real estate brokerages who control NWMLS and to NWMLS, but the “claim is nowhere explained or supported.”
Glass did not respond to a request for comment about these criticisms.
