Legal News

Bill Lerach, Giver of Cookies and Cars, to be Sentenced Today

By Nathan Koppel

Judgment time has finally arrived for Bill Lerach. Today, Los Angeles federal judge John Walter is due to sentence Lerach, who agreed to plead guilty last September to playing a role in the alleged kickback scheme at Milberg Weiss.

To recap, prosecutors claim Milberg shared legal fees with clients to induce them to quickly file securities class actions. Lerach, who pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiring to obstruct justice, acknowledges making secret payments to former client Steven Cooperman. Click here for a nifty overview of the case and the players.

Prosecutors seek a two-year prison term, but in a filing Friday Lerach asked for six months in the pokey and six months of home confinement.

Lerach’s sentencing memorandum, essentially a 50-page plea for leniency, includes some interesting biographical details: his father lost an inheritance during the depression and struggled finacially; Lerach worked as a gofer at a funeral home and a laborer at a nursery, among other jobs during college and law school; and, he started his career at Reed Smith, making parter in five years; the shortest period of time in firm history, according to the brief.

But most notable are the more than 150 letters of support accompanying the filing (click here for one batch). The letter writers are an impressive and diverse group, including actor/columnist Ben Stein, Senator Carl Levin, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, law-firm heavyweights Brad Karp (Paul Weiss) and Greg Markel (Cadwalader), two attorneys who have represented Lerach in divorce matters, two of his drivers, and a gentleman who has serviced Lerach’s saltwater aquariums.

Here are a few of our favorite excerpts:

I have been humbled many times in my own life, and know well that all of us, as human beings, make mistakes.

– Tower Snow Jr. , the onetime law-firm visionary and head of defunct Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison.

“I also witnessed personally Bill’s daily phone calls and/or fax to [his mother, who lived in a nursing home.] The fax always started with “To the World’s Greatest Mom.”

– Darlene Campeau, a friend of Lerach’s mother.

When he bought a new car, he gave me his Maxima instead of trading it in.

– Kathryn Lichnovsky, Lerach’s secretary for almost 30 years.

Every day Mr. Lerach makes us a big pot of coffee and gives us juice, fruits, pastries, cookies.

– Encarnacion Lopez Sanchez, Lerach’s gardener

I will close by providing the Court with Mr. Lerach’s response to my pleas to return as his associate in the summer of 2006 . . . ‘Money makes people a******* Mary. That is why I would not pay you the money you insisted you were entitled to.

Mary Blasy, a former associate with Lerach’s firm.

Law Blog readers, do these musings affect your feelings about the man?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 11, 2008 (boomark / email).