Few took notice last year when Gibbs & Bruns began laying the groundwork for what eventually became an $8.5 billion settlement with Bank of America over hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities. Now the firm has picked JPMorgan as its second target, and this time it has everybody's attention.

Some defendants blink when they're facing the prospect of an ugly discrimination class action. For his client, Merrill Lynch, Klein instead collected affidavits from around the country to show that every purported class member faced highly individual circumstances. The hard-line defense paid off when a Chicago judge refused this week to certify a class of African-American financial advisers and trainees.

The bankruptcy British division had to fend off claims from other Lehman entities, which asserted that securities bouncing around in internal transfers were merely held in trust by Lehman UK.