John F. Meyers was a rainmaker at Seyfarth Shaw, forging and maintaining client relationships—and billing hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, the former equity partner in Atlanta once recounted.

Meyers had about 30 regular clients at Seyfarth, where the veteran lawyer—he helped build the firm's Atlanta office—was on the labor and employment team. He estimated his hands touched $5 million to $6 million in business annually.

All of that came to a sudden stop in 2012, when one of Seyfarth's big clients, the New Jersey-based manufacturer J.M. Huber Corp., raised concerns about Meyers' billing. A Huber in-house lawyer confronted Seyfarth, and Meyers was questioned at a meeting at the firm's headquarters in Chicago.