First up are lawyers at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, the co-lead counsel in shareholder litigation against Wells Fargo & Co. claiming the bank misled investors about reforms after its 2016 fake accounts scandal. The bank this week agreed to pay $1 billion, which would be one of the 20 largest shareholder settlements of all-time if approved. The deal got preliminary sign-off from U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan within 24 hours of filing. The Bernstein Litowitz team includes Max Berger, who led settlement negotiations, John Browne, Jeroen van Kwawegen, Hannah Ross, Jonathan Uslaner and senior associate Lauren Cruz. The Cohen Milstein team includes Steven Toll, Laura Posner and Molly Bowen. 

A team at Cravath, Swaine & Moore led by partners David Marriott and David Kappos got a groundbreaking win for photographers Donald Graham and Eric McNatt in their copyright showdown with celebrity appropriation artist Richard Prince and his associated galleries. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in Manhattan last week denied Prince's fair use defense for incorporating the photographers' work in his "New Portraits" series, which took copies of the photographs posted to Instagram alongside his own comments and printed them on canvas.

Runners-up honors also go to lawyers at Munger, Tolles & Olson, Civil Rights Corps, and Public Justice who secured an injunction forcing officials in Los Angeles, home of the largest jail system in the country, to follow a policy enacted during the pandemic barring non-violent, low-level offenders from being detained simply because they are unable to pay cash bail. Following a months-long evidentiary hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff this week found that the plaintiffs had shown they're likely to succeed in showing it's unconstitutional for the city and county to jail people until their first court date simply because they can't afford to pay bail. Munger Tolles chair Brad Brian and Salil Dudani of Civil Rights Corps argued the motion for a preliminary injunction. The team also includes Jeffrey Stein, Alec Karakatsanis and Shirley LaVarco of Civil Rights Corps, Brianne Holland-Stergar, Rohit Singla, Rowley Rice, Tiana Baheri, Taylor Benninger and Victoria Degtyareva of Munger Tolles, and Brian Hardingham and Leslie Bailey of Public Justice.