Blake Lively's Legal Team Presents Justin Baldoni With Bill Exceeding $8 Million

Justin Baldoni is now facing the financial consequences of a court ruling issued earlier this month, after a judge determined that he must cover Blake Lively's legal fees following the dismissal of the lawsuits the two It Ends With Us stars had filed against each other. A newly obtained legal filing shows just how steep that bill turned out to be, with Lively's team asserting she is owed slightly more than $8 million in total.

According to the court document, Lively is seeking $7,495,526.87 in what her lawyers describe as reasonable attorneys' fees, along with an additional $539,514.01 in associated costs. The documentation supporting that figure is extensive, packed with charts, tables, footnotes, exhibits, and appendices that lay out exactly how the costs were calculated. Notably, the filing even accounts for the time attorneys spent compiling the filing itself, a detail that underscores just how thoroughly billed the entire process has been.

Despite the eye-popping total, the filing suggests Baldoni is technically benefiting from discounted rates, since it states that all hours billed to Lively were reduced by 10 to 15 percent off the standard rates charged by the two firms representing her, Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.

The filing offers granular detail about individual billing rates. Michael J. Gottlieb, a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, disclosed in a sworn declaration that his standard hourly rate stood at $2,795 as of the fourth quarter of 2025, though he charged Lively a discounted rate of $2,187 per hour.

Over 224 hours of work on her case, Gottlieb's fees alone amounted to roughly $457,000. His declaration goes further, breaking down rates for each attorney involved and concluding with a chart showing a median hourly rate of $1,450 across the legal team. In one notable line item, a Willkie Farr & Gallagher team member billed 4.3 hours on May 31 specifically for the work of calculating these very figures, generating a charge of $2,941.20, effectively a bill for preparing the bill.

Lively's attorneys argue that this level of detail is justified given what they describe as the conduct that preceded the litigation. The filing's introduction alleges that Steve Sarowitz, the billionaire backer of Wayfarer Studios and an associate of Baldoni's, had warned before the lawsuit even began that he would use his personal wealth to ruin Lively and her husband should she ever step out of line. The alleged warning came before Lively filed suit accusing Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation, a complaint that prompted Baldoni to countersue for $400 million on defamation grounds.

Lively's legal team characterizes the opposing side's approach throughout the case as a deliberate strategy aimed at exhausting her financial resources through aggressive litigation, arguing that Baldoni and his associates had numerous opportunities to settle and reimburse her but chose not to, which they say justifies a court order requiring full reimbursement of her costs, fees, and expenses.

The dispute traces back to December 2024, when Lively first came forward with allegations that Baldoni had harassed her during production of It Ends With Us and later orchestrated a campaign to damage her public image.

The countersuit Baldoni filed in response also attempted to pull Taylor Swift into the proceedings, though efforts by his legal team to compel her testimony through a deposition were ultimately unsuccessful.

The two sides announced in May that they had reached a settlement, issuing a joint statement acknowledging that the legal process had been difficult and that the concerns Lively raised deserved to be heard, while expressing hope that the resolution would allow everyone involved to move forward in a more constructive and peaceful way. That settlement set the stage for U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman's ruling earlier in June, which formally placed responsibility for Lively's legal costs on Baldoni.

Representatives for Baldoni had not issued a comment at the time of the filing's disclosure.