A former partner at Latham & Watkins has been sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay a $10,000 (£6,000) fine and $350,000 (£210,000) in restitution to Latham for defrauding both clients and his own firm.

Samuel Fishman, an M&A specialist in the US firm's New York office from 1993 to 2005, pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud in March 2008. He faced a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Fishman, whose sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, admitted that he had billed fraudulent expenses to clients by mischaracterising some nonreimbursable costs, such as local meals and parking, as other reimbursable costs, such as photocopying and express mail, and had inflated other, otherwise reimbursable expenses.