IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

DICK ANTHONY HELLER, et al., ) Case No. 03-CV-0213-EGS

DECLARATION OF ALAN GURA

I, Alan Gura, am competent to state and declare the following based on my personal

knowledge.

1. I earned my Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown University in 1995, the year in

which I was first admitted to practice law. I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree

from Cornell University in 1992. I am a member of the California, District of

Columbia, and Virginia bars.

2. Upon graduation from law school, I clerked for the Hon. Terrence W. Boyle on

the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Subsequently, I served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, in

the Civil Division of the California Department of Justice. Based in the Los

Angeles office, I covered courts throughout southern and central California. I was

tasked with first-chair responsibility for representing the state and its employees in

a broad array of matters, in trial and on appeal. I handled dozens of cases, ranging
 from aviation to privacy rights, but the heaviest component of my workload

consisted of civil rights work under Section 1983.

3. From 1998 to 2000, I worked at the Washington, D.C. offices of Sidley & Austin

as an associate, where I continued working on civil rights cases in addition to

various commercial litigation matters. From early 2000 through early 2001, I

served as Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee,

Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Oversight. I first opened my own practice in

2001, focusing primarily in civil rights and intellectual property litigation. The

size of our firm has fluctuated over the years, but my practice has always retained

a significant amount of pro bono and reduced rate civil rights litigation. Although

this work is personally rewarding, it is difficult to sustain as civil rights plaintiffs

are, as a rule, never able to afford representation. Even in cases where a

contingency fee arrangement might be possible owing to the availability of money

damages, these cases are usually made feasible by the prospect of recovering fees

under fee shifting provisions such as 42 U.S.C. § 1988. We do not have a

standard set hourly rate charged to all clients. Fees vary from matter to matter,

based on a host of factors, with many matters handled on a flat-fee, contingency,

or blended basis. My clients include victims of police brutality and incompetence

(including on occasion Defendants’ victims), non-profit organizations, and

creative individuals with copyright claims that could not be viable absent the fee-

shifting provision of 17 U.S.C. § 505.

4. I have been published in various legal and general interest publications, including

the Texas Review of Law and Politics, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, Legal
 Times, the American Enterprise, and Washington Jewish Week, for which I author

a column on a monthly basis.

5. In setting the fee arrangement for this litigation, it was never my intention to

recover anything close to a market rate from Robert Levy, nor did I believe that

Robert Levy should bear such a burden, especially as he had volunteered to pay

for the costs of the litigation personally. I took a calculated risk in setting a

nominal, fixed, and capped rate that was quickly exhausted.

6. My proposal to Mr. Levy for becoming involved in the litigation was set forth in

an email I sent him December 11, 2002 at 1:38 PM, which provides in pertinent

part: “I am interested in taking on this project, but cannot do so on a [completely

free] pro bono basis. I am, however, sympathetic to the cause and sensitive to the

need to limit the cost of this venture. I am therefore willing to work for a

reduced, flat fee of [redacted] plus expenses . . . .In the event fees are recovered

under section 1988, Bivens, or EAJA, I would keep any fees recovered in excess

of [redacted]. Fee rights would be assigned to my firm and could not be waived

by the clients. . . .” Subsequently Mr. Levy and I agreed to my proposed flat fee,

comprised of a cap and reduced rate. Dividing that fee, in dollars, by the number

of hours worked yields a single digit number, and the final payment under this

arrangement was received in mid-2003.

7. I could not have taken the litigation absent the prospect of recovering fees from

the city under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, and I always believed that if we were to achieve

our ultimate goal – securing the Second Amendment as an individual right before

the Supreme Court – that this would merit an enhancement under Section 1988’s
 exceptional case doctrine. The written fee agreements executed by the clients,

including Mr. Heller, explicitly assigned all 42 U.S.C. § 1988 rights to our firm

and any lawyers with whom our firm would associate, in accordance with the

usual practice in civil rights cases.

8. The case proved far more protracted and difficult than originally anticipated.

Levy recognized as much and offered to provide me additional compensation, but

I turned such offers down because it was not part of our deal. I did accept a small

advance against the fee recovery after we won at the Supreme Court. While I

hope to capitalize on the victory in this case, the fact is that until now, handling

this matter has proven to be a hardship. Apart from the hours spent on the case

and as a result of it, this case has been a major distraction significantly curtailing

my practice. The ancillary benefits from being involved in this project, though

personally rewarding, do not pay the bills – they are rarely economically rational

standing alone, never mind as compensation for the time spent litigating.

9. Apart from the risk of nonpayment, I took this case at significant risk to my

career. Outside my co-counsel, virtually every attorney with whom I discussed

this case, until we prevailed in the D.C. Circuit, thought that the case was quixotic

at best. The Second Amendment is a more serious topic of discussion now than it

was in 2002. Even after we prevailed in the D.C. Circuit, I received intense

criticism from many people who continued to believe the case was unwinnable at

the Supreme Court, whatever its merits. In the wake of the D.C. Circuit’s

decision, I spent a good amount of time on Capitol Hill, lobbying against an effort

to legislatively moot our victory.

Supreme Court’s decision, has been overwhelmingly positive and quite gratifying.

However, I have also received a notable amount of often vulgar, hateful and

irrational criticism from extremists who believe I “sold out” their Second

Amendment rights in conceding that the right to keep and bear arms is not an

absolute right completely free of government regulation. One alleged “pro-gun”

organization issued a press release announcing its “shock and horror” at my so-

called concession that there will be at least some constitutional gun regulations.

The head of this organization went on the air with a conspiracy theorist host and

harrumphed his approval as the host alleged we were “Judas goats” who pursued

the case in collusion with the Defendants to gut the Second Amendment.

Conceding the theoretical constitutionality of some gun regulations led one

editorialist to suggest that someone “got to” me before the argument, or perhaps I

was incompetent. And I received one letter from a federal inmate incarcerated for

gun violations, who has some radical connections, advising me, “you were

nothing short of Benedict Arnold or Osama Bin Laden. I expect historians to burn

you at the stake, deservedly.” Calling me an “elite suburban lawyer,” the inmate

concludes that I was “the wolf in sheep’s clothing that invites the other judicial

hyenas in the door to ritualistically taste the raw flesh of The Bill of Rights anew.”

And this is all from people who are sympathetic to an individual rights

interpretation of the Second Amendment (albeit a lunatic variant unlikely to

persuade a single federal or state judge in the land). My sense is also that many

attorneys and others who were sympathetic to the city’s position, and who actually