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They went from BigLaw to the Big House. Now the four former partners in Millberg Wiess Bershad Hynes & Lerach (now Millberg LLP) who pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks to clients are out and trying to move forward.
A report today in BusinessWeek gets us reacquainted with Melvyn Weiss, William Lerach, David Bershad and Steve Schulman. The quartet, which secretly paid clients to pursue securities fraud class actions that brought the firm $251 million in attorney fees from 1979-2005, received prison sentences of between six months and 2 ½ years. Lerach, 64, was freed March 8. Weiss was freed Feb. 5 and Bershad, 70, and Schulman, 58, were released last July.
According to the report, Weiss was given the nickname “Pops” while in the clink and is now “thinking about the experience” while working on his golf game in Boca Raton. Bershad is back at his home in Montclair, New Jersey, where “right now I am getting my life together.”
Lerach said he plans to teach a course titled “Regulation of Free Market Capitalism — Why We Have Failed,” at a law school he declined to name, and Schulman declined comment in the story.
All four lawyers were disbarred for the transgressions. For more evidence that crime doesn’t pay, click here.
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