Apple v. Samsung: Whose lawyers are earning more in the smartphone wars?

Apple v. Samsung, the first big patent trial between smartphone competitors, is scheduled to start next Monday in a San Jose federal court.

The case has been going on more than 15 months already, producing scads of cash for the law firms representing both sides. Now, more information is coming out about how much those firms are charging. Over the weekend, Samsung's lawyers filed a motion demanding that certain fees be paid by Apple [PDF]. Putting that together with a similar motion filed by Apple back in May gives an indication of just how much lawyers at the top of the smartphone-war hierarchy get paid.

Clearly, neither side is wanting. Having said that, court records show that Samsung's lawyers in this case are commanding a higher rate than those representing Apple. The fee motions filed so far indicate that Apple's lawyers, from the firm of Morrison Foerster, are billing an average of $526 per hour [PDF]. On the opposite side, Samsung's lawyers hail from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, and they are charging an average hourly rate of $592 [PDF].

On Team Samsung, partners are billing a median rate of $821, while associates are billing a median rate of $448. Partners working for Apple are billing a median rate of $582 per hour, with associates billing $398 per hour.

It's likely that the pay of top partners at the top two firms is closer together than those numbers show; the median here is probably skewed by the small sample size with just four partners counted on each team's bill. Also, these motions are about specific chunks of work related to discovery that each side wants the other to pay for. The average billing rate for the case as a whole will differ, depending on the mix of lawyers involved.

Still, these motions are useful guideposts, representing fees charged for several hundred hours of legal work in total. The rates line up with what the two sides' law firms have reported to the legal press about their earnings. Both firms report their total revenues, as well as "profits per partner," a number that tracks closely with average partner salary.

At Morrison & Foerster, Apple's main law firm in this case, partners took home an average of $1.4 million in profits last year. At Samsung's chosen firm, Quinn Emanuel—also a go-to patent law firm for partner Google—partners have enjoyed average profits of $4.16 million in 2011.

Of course, the best-known partners tend to earn substantially more than their firm average. In the case of Apple v. Samsung, star players include Michael Jacobs at Morrison Foerster. He litigated against SCO for Novell, and recently fought a tough (but ultimately losing) battle for Oracle in Oracle v. Google. Charles Verhoeven is the star for the other team at Quinn Emanuel. In 2010, he pulled out two big defense wins for Google patent trials in the Eastern District of Texas, a region often seen as unfriendly to tech defendants.

If the case doesn't settle, a panel of jurors will be selected to hear the case on Monday morning.