Legal News

Lerach?s Departure Makes Life Easier at Coughlin Stoia

By Dan Slater

With Bill Lerach finally sentenced for his role in the government’s kickback case against Milberg Weiss, lawyers at Coughlin Stoia say the pall he cast over the firm he co-founded has largely dissipated, reports the NLJ.

“Yes, Bill was a household name and brought good and bad,” said Patrick Coughlin, co-founder of the 175-person, San Diego-based litigation boutique. “But he’s been in the press under that investigation for years. With all due respect, our competitors hammered us every time we walked in the door anywhere. That doesn’t happen anymore. . . . Literally, Bill would suck all the air out of the room. He was so visible that you weren’t going to reach out to a number of people in the firm. That’s naturally changing.”

Since Lerach’s departure, Coughlin Stoia has reportedely filed an average of about 17 new cases per month during 2007, up from about 15 new cases per month earlier in the year. Also, according to the report, about two dozen new pension funds have retained the firm.

Kelly Jenkins, the general counsel at the State Universities Retirement System of Illinois, which recently retained Coughlin Stoia on a five-year contract, also chimed in. “It was something that we considered, whether he was going to be with the firm or not. And once we knew he had left the law firm . . . it became of no consequence to us.”

And Lerach? Presumably he’s happy about his former firm’s ability to soldier on. “I wasn’t going to allow my law firm to be destroyed and I wasn’t going to let my partners be destroyed,” he told the old Law Blog, Peter Lattman, earlier this month. “I was guilty.” (In case you missed them, click here for Peter’s story, and here for excerpts from their conversation.)

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 26, 2008 (boomark / email).