Legal News

On Milberg, Arthur Miller, Mea Culpas and . . . Basketball?

By Nathan Koppel

Today, we serve up a cornucopia of Milberg news, from basketball fouls to esteemed professors.

Let’s first update the Los Angeles criminal case which alleges the firm and former partners paid kickback to clients. On Monday, former name partners David Bershad and Steven Schulman, the remaining key defendants in the case, are due to be sentenced.

Bershad pleaded guilty last year to a felony and faces up to 33 months in prison. But citing his cooperation, prosecutors Monday recommended that he serve three months in prison, followed by three months of community confinement.

Bershad, who has asked to serve no prison time, wrote this mea culpa to the judge. “I alone am to blame for those who have turned away from me,” he said, noting that his 30-year marriage was at an end and that his four children had suffered “from having to confront the hypocrisy of a father who acted contrary to the values he taught them.”

Prosecutors seek a one-year prison term for Schulman, who has asked for six months. In this October letter to the judge, he also expressed remorse and stressed his suffering. “I have lost my good name,” he worte. “I have sustained severe losses and am in growing financial distress.”

On to the basketball court. In 2006, Milberg recruited Devone Stephenson, a 6’8 former semi-pro baskeball player, to play on its lawyer-league hoops team, according to an article today in the New York Law Journal

In a 2006 game, Stephenson, who was not an attorney or employed by Milberg, was allegedly punched in the face by an opposing player. Stephenson sued the league ─ he was not represented by Milberg ─ but a New York court tossed out his case, because he had signed a waiver assuming responsibility for the actions, inactions and negligence of others.

Finally, in happier news, Milberg yesterday announced that famous former Harvard law prof Arthur Miller (pictured) has joined the firm as a special counsel. Miller, now at NYU Law, has hosted a series on PBS and served as the legal editor for Good Morning America. Law students may know Miller from his famed Civil Procedure audiotapes.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 23, 2008 (boomark / email).