Before lawyers at Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach beat out a dozen other plaintiffs’ firms to become lead counsel on behalf of Enron Corp. investors in 2002, they had to decide whether they could afford the risk.
Their client, the University of California, which lost $140 million when Enron collapsed, paid a blended contingent fee of about 9.5%. “We thought that was too low and too risky,” said Patrick Coughlin, name partner at Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins. The San Diego firm inherited the case after William Lerach, name partner at Milberg Weiss and a lead attorney against Enron, left in 2004 to form his own firm.
