Tough Kids Split Into Two Gangs

US law firm Milberg Weiss has long been the tough kid on the block. Since the 1970s, it has used class action law suits to win more than $30bn in settlements for wronged shareholders and consumers, dominating the field and earning the bitter enmity of its corporate foes along the way.

But now America's biggest securities law class action firm is about to become America's two biggest class action firms. This month, senior partner Bill Lerach and more than 100 attorneys in the firm's US West Coast offices will form their own separate firm, Lerach Coughlin Stoia & Robbins. . . .

[T]he legal officers of corporate America can draw one consolation from Bill Lerach's new manifestation: the entertaining spectacle of Lerach Coughlin slugging it out with Milberg Weiss over the right to lead the class actions of the future.

Details here from the Financial Times. (via Overlawyered.com) (My earlier posts on the split are here and here.)

UPDATE: Here's more on the Milberg split -- plus news of a possible merger between San Francisco-based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and D.C.'s Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman -- from Law.com.