A drawn-out effort to overhaul the New Orleans Police Department took a major step forward late last week when a federal judge selected Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton to oversee a 2012 consent decree designed to remedy a host of ills plaguing the troubled force.
Ending a lengthy impasse over whether Sheppard Mullin or Chicago-based security and investigative services firm Hillard Heintze would help clean up an agency the U.S. Department of Justice described in a scathing 2011 report as reliant on racial profiling and the use of excessive force, and undermined by an overall lack of accountability, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan ruled Friday that the Am Law 200 firm should get the assignment.
While the details of Sheppard Mullin's contract are still being finalized, the firm originally estimated that its work on the matter would cost no more than $7.9 million over the course of the four-year assignment and capped the total amount it would bill at $8.9 million. Hillard Heintze, meanwhile, placed an estimate of $7.2 million on its initial proposal.
In choosing Sheppard Mullin, Morgan sided with the Justice Department over the objections of city officials and some local community leaders, who preferred Hillard Heintze. The two firms became finalists for the job after emerging from a group of 12 contenders that submitted proposals last fall. When multiple follow-up interviews and public hearings earlier this year failed to produce a consensus among city and federal officials about which firm should fill the role, both candidates were asked to submit hybrid proposals including members of their competing teams. That proposition failed, and after more delays and disagreement, Morgan was forced to make the decision.
The judge explained in her seven-page ruling why she believes a law firm is best equipped to tackle the job, which involves reviewing new police department policies to ensure that they are in line with the consent decree's requirements and assessing whether the city is complying with those requirements, rather than formulating and putting the policies into effect.
"The duties of the monitor closely track the kinds of activities that are the bread and butter of legal practice," she wrote, adding, "That kind of institutional investigation and assessment, which involves the collection, review, and synthesis of large amounts of information, is also a task that lawyers, particularly lawyers at firms like Sheppard Mullin, routinely perform."
In a statement, Sheppard Mullin partner Jonathan Aronie, who will lead the New Orleans team, said he and his team are "pleased" that the selection phase is over. He also praised the consent decree's goals and said the firm looks forward to helping make sure "the cures embodied by that document are effectively implemented."
Aronie, a government contracts lawyer and the co–managing partner of the firm's Washington, D.C., office, worked on a similar assignment in the early 2000s when his former firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, served as independent monitor of the D.C. police department in the wake of a Justice Department investigation into the agency's use of deadly force. That experience, Morgan wrote in her ruling, helped make Sheppard Mullin more qualified for the New Orleans job than Hillard Heintze, whose team leader, former Chicago police department superintendent Terry Hillard, had no similar experience. Hillard and a spokesman for his firm did not return requests for comment Monday. (Aronie joined Sheppard Mullin's D.C. office in 2003 along with four other members of Fried Frank's government contracts group.)
Morgan also praised "the streamlined nature" of Sheppard's proposed team, which, in addition to a handful of firm lawyers, includes four current and former police chiefs from around the country and two academic experts.
At a public hearing on April 3, Aronie stressed Sheppard Mullin's intention to build trust for the firm within what he acknowledged was a skeptical community. "Whether the findings are popular or unpopular, I mean, I'll be blunt," Arnoie said, according to a transcript of the proceedings included in public filings. "I don't care. What I care about is a fully supported report. And if we do that right, that restores public trust. Because right now from everything I've read in the papers, the public doesn't believe that anything is going to happen."
New Orleans officials don't appear to have embraced Sheppard Mullin's selection just yet. In a statement, city attorney Sharonda Williams said, "We're hopeful Sheppard Mullin will study the reforms the city has put in place over the last three years and adjust their fees since they were the higher-priced proposal. Our intent is to continue to develop a fair and cost-effective deal for the taxpayers."
In its bid, Sheppard Mullin said it plans to charge a blended rate of $425 per hour for senior lawyers and $350 per hour for junior lawyers—prices it calls "significantly below our standard commercial rates." Daniel Brown, a Sheppard Mullin partner and chair of its pro bono committee, said in a statement that the firm "has a long history of taking on public interest projects where we can use our skills to help important causes. Our interest in the New Orleans monitoring project, and the significantly discounted rates that will apply to this matter, is reflective of this firmwide commitment."
As city and federal officials worked to appoint a monitor, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration has also been fighting to vacate the 492-point consent decree. In late May, Morgan thwarted the city's efforts and ruled that the decree is "a fair, adequate, and reasonable solution for transforming the NOPD into a world-class police force," according to The Times-Picayune.
In its 153-page pitch, Sheppard Mullin recognized that "we are not from New Orleans," and proposed hiring local counsel to help in its work. Its pitch continued: "but our team’s geographic, gender, racial, political, religious, and experiential diversity positions us well to understand New Orleans."
The court requested that Sheppard Mullin's contract negotiations be finalized by July 19.
