Normally, in a blog devoted to securities litigation, any mention of the word 'plea' would suggest we are talking about a criminal case.

This is a plea of a different nature.

This past weekend, I rode in the American Diabetes Association's 2009 Tour de Cure.

Many of you know that I used to be a pretty hard-core cyclist, riding more than 500 miles every week in high school and college. And a few of you know that my father in law is diabetic.

That is why I am asking for your support - it's not too late to pledge any amount that you are able - using the link below.

Donate Here!

(Yes that is me wearing my official RiskMetrics Group cycling jersey just after completing the ride)

The Tour de Cure is a series of fund-raising cycling events held in 40 states nationwide to benefit the American Diabetes Association. Last year, more than 38,000 cyclists in 78 Tour events raised nearly $16 million to support the mission of the ADA: to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.

Diabetes impacts not just those that have been diagnosed (23.6 million children and adults -- 8.0% of the population in the US alone), but their families, friends, co-workers, and all of us. In 2007 alone, the total annual economic cost of diabetes was estimated to be $174 billion.

Any amount is appreciated, and will go a long way towards helping find an end to the struggle that millions of people face in coping with diabetes.

Thanks for the indulgence, and we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

Here at SLW World Headquarters, we received a call earlier today from an old law school classmate regarding Lawdragon's 100 Lawyers You Need to Know in Securities Litigation list.

We won't get into details, but it piqued our interest, so we set to work slicing and dicing the list.

A few interesting details.

The 100 lawyers graduated from 43 different law schools, with an average graduation year of 1981. Willis H. Riccio is the elder statesmen of the group (Georgetown '58), and as gently pointed out by this alleged friend, I am the new kid on the block (Villanova '00).

Harvard was the clear leader, with 16 graduates on the list. NYU, Yale, Georgetown, and Columbia rounded out the Top 5.

But just because a school is in the Ivy League doesn't mean that its graduates fair better than other law school graduates. Penn only has one graduate on the list, while local competitors Temple and Villanova each have two graduates on the list.

And being on the "Top 10" lists of law schools doesn't guarantee admission to the club, as UC Berkeley has not a single graduate on the list, but a Golden Gate University graduate, from just across the San Francisco Bay, snagged a spot on the list.

As far as ideological breakdown goes (a/k/a Drinking the Kool Aid):

16 lawyers on the list clearly sit on the left side of the "v" - that is they primarily represent plaintiffs.

75 clearly sit on the right side of the "v" - that is they primarily represent defendants.

7 are switch hitters, representing a mix of plaintiffs and defendants.

2 (me and Commissioner Grundfest) aren't representing people in private practice these days, though I am a former plaintiff's attorney.

Lawdragon (the fastest-growing legal community in the world), has put out their newest list, 100 Lawyers You Need to Know in Securities Litigation.

The complete list is available here, and I am told it will be the subject of a more in depth story in the next issue of the magazine, which should be out shortly.

With a nod to fellow blogger Francis G.X. Pileggi, I have to stop briefly in the Self-Adulation Department, and note that I am on the list, and by my quick review, one of only two lawyers not currently in private practice on the list.

Given that the other member of the sub-list is Professor Joseph Grundfest from Stanford who happens to also be a former SEC commissioner, combined with the gravitas of the other members of the Top 100 list, I am in a word, humbled.

As my Securities Class Action research team finishes up the heavy lifting for our annual SCAS 50 report on the top plaintiffs' law firms, it struck me that many of the firms have changed names in the last twelve months.

I'm not referring to the low-hanging fruit here (e.g. Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, n/k/a Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins or Milberg Weiss & Bershad n/k/a Milberg Weiss) that were discussed in the Wall Street Journal.

A number of other firms changed names during the last year, generally representing the departure or addition of partners, or the elevation of a current partner to "name partner" status.

The former Lowey Dannenberg Bemporad Selinger & Cohen, P.C. (which is generally known as Lowey Dannenberg) has changed names twice during that spell, first dropping former name partner Neil Selinger (who remains of counsel to the firm) and Richard Bemporad (who has disappeared) and then, very recently adding Barbara Hart as a name partner from the Labaton Sucharow firm. The new name, for those keeping score at home - Lowey, Dannenberg, Cohen & Hart, P.C.

The former Kirby McInerney & Squire is now known as Kirby McInerney, with the move of Jeffrey H. Squire to an of counsel position at Bragar Wexler & Eagel, P.C.

Abbey Spanier Rodd Abrams & Paradis (itself a former name game contestant) has shortened by one name to Abbey Spanier Rodd & Abrams with the departure of Paul O. Paradis. Paul is now a name partner at Horwitz, Horwitz & Paradis.

Labaton Sucharow & Rudoff LLP has dropped Sheldon Rudoff from the name plate, but he remains a partner with the firm. The name change to Labaton Sucharow was presaged back in 2005 when the firm changed names from Goodkind Labaton Rudoff & Sucharow and noted that the firm was "more commonly to be known as Labaton Sucharow."

The former Schatz & Nobel is now Schatz Nobel Izard (no ampersand, thank you very much) with the addition of ERISA specialist Robert Izard to the letterhead.

The trend, if you will call it that, is not one of simply shortening firm names, but instead appears to represent one of increased mobility and a desire to keep the almighty typesetters union happy.

The Seattle based firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro has opened an office in San Francisco, to be headed by former Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins partner Reed Kathrein.

Kathrein will be joined by three other Lerach Coughlin attorneys and will also manage Hagens Berman's Los Angeles office. Kathrein had of course opened the San Francisco office of Lerach Coughlin's predecessor firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP, in 1994.

The Recorder has a story on the move, here and Hagens Berman issued a press release, here.

Of tangential interest, Kathrein, has not one, but two eponymously named websites - www.reedkathrein.com and www.reedk.com. We first explored the eponymous securities litigator website issue last June, starting with two defense attorneys, who not only both wore bowties, but also maintained their own non-firm websites.

Of even more tangential interest, Hagens Berman is surely the only plaintiff side law firm to sponsor an elite amateur cycling team, the Lake Washington Velo / Hagens Berman Cycling Team.

Meanwhile, on the other coast (or at least close to the coast), The Legal Intelligencer has a story on Philadelphia attorney Jonathan Shub, and his move from Sheller, P.C. to open the Philadelphia office of Seeger Weiss LLP, with two other former Sheller attorneys.

I stumbled upon a website today--ThinkExist.com--that purports to be a Quotation Search Engine and Directory with over 300,000 quotations by over 20,000 authors.  You know-- Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain... and me?  To my extreme surprise, 9 of these quotations are from me!  (Click here for a list of my pearls of supposed wisdom).

I don't know what to say about this discovery other than, to borrow a quote from one of my fellow "quoted authors,"

"Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member!"--Groucho Marx

Spotted today in this post by the ever-vigilant WSJ Law Blog is the first collection of "Free Steve Schulman" products.  Schulman, you may recall, is one of the Milberg Weiss partners indicted last month.

The National Law Journal has published its list of the 100 most influential lawyers in America.  Viewing it through the SLW lens, we can weed out the riff-raff (just kidding David Boies, Brendan Sullivan, and the rest of you luminaries) that constitutes 92% of that list, and get right to the lawyers that matter in our narrowly-focused world.  By my count, at least 8 of the lawyers on this list are from the securities litigation arena:

Going alphabetically they are:

1. 

Steve W. Berman 51, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, Seattle

2.

Richard C. Breeden 56, Richard C. Breeden & Co., Greenwich, Conn.

3.

John C. Coffee Jr. 61, Columbia Law School, New York

4.

Joseph A. Grundfest 54, Stanford Law School, Palo Alto, Calif.

5.

William Lerach 60, Lerach Coughlin Stoia GellerRudman & Robbins, San Diego

6.

Gary Naftalis 56, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, New York

7.

Jerold S. Solovy 76, Jenner & Block, Chicago

8.

Bruce G. Vanyo 60, Katten Muchin Rosenman, Los Angeles

Chris Kentouris of Securities Industry News has this article entitled "Clearing Up Class-Action Settlements" that discusses my company (ISS' Securities Class Action Services) and the work we do for institutional investors to help them recover settlement funds.  As discussed in the article,

With ISS's outsourced service, investment advisers and custodian banks just have to provide a list of their clients' positions in an affected security; ISS will take care of all the paperwork necessary to retrieve funds--no small task considering the dozens of pages that must be filled out and sent to claims administrators. Multiply that by the several dozen lawsuits that a large fund or custodian bank needs to keep track of each year, and one could end up buried in a mountain of paper. And funds are not recovered automatically. It can take two to five years to retrieve funds, if at all.

"Some firms do the work through corporate actions departments, others have specialized units and yet others cobble together staff from different departments each time they need to process proof-of-claim paperwork," says Bruce Carton, vice president at ISS. "That work doesn't even take into account the need to maintain a database on pending settlements." Carton estimates that outsourcing to a firm such as ISS often saves the annual salaries of at least two full-time operations executives. Mellon Bank has a dedicated staff of 12 working within a specialized securities class-action lawsuit unit.