As of Friday, William Lerach will be the former scariest plaintiffs lawyer in America.What in it is true? Lerach -- probably the most prominent, and at times most influential and among the most innovative, plaintiffs' lawyer in America; a man who prompted a major congressional act intended to knock him down a few pegs, but that ended up only making him richer -- is retiring. What's not true? That he was all that scary. I can understand why he was the bogeyman for boardrooms across America -- a company knew that any drop in its stock price would at first certainly, and later likely, lead to an expensive lawsuit, and that was in large part Lerach's doing. At heart, though, Lerach and his lieutenants were businessmen, eager to exploit market opportunities but just as willing to make rational business deals to settle cases. There are a lot of plaintiffs' securities lawyers who, in an effort to substantiate the resume claim that "I'm better and more aggressive than Bill Lerach," prove themselves capable of rash decisions that drive up litigation costs without resulting in bigger settlements.
Anyway, Lerach is retiring, waiting to see if his firm implodes in his absence, and possibly going to jail. I imagine that somewhere in a high-rise in Chicago, Dan Fischel is preparing to uncork a very fine bottle of wine.
Edited to add: What do you think about Law.com/the Recorder's omission of an apostrophe in the phrase "plaintiffs lawyer"? I think it needs the apostrophe, but the quote that haunted Lerach for years -- something to the effect that "I have the greatest job in the world. I don't have clients," though I couldn't find it in a google search -- suggests otherwise.
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