Legal News

Just a Bunch of Ex-Cons, Enjoying Their Freedom

By Ashby Jones

We can see it now, the reality show featuring the four once-high-flying plaintiffs lawyers who’ve done their time and have a new lease on life. Cut to Mel Weiss high-fiving after draining a thirty-foot putt on a Florida golf course. Cut to David Bershad, flipping omelets for his family in the kitchen of his New Jersey home. Cut to the ever-serious Bill Lerach in his bedroom, practicing the lecture he’s about to give to a roomful of law students. Admit it, LBers, you’d watch this.

Well, until the Hollywood reality-show geniuses give the show, “Kicking Back (with Mel, David and Bill)” the greenlight (get it? Kickbacks. Kicking back?), you’ll have to view their lives through the eyes of we lowly scriveners.

Bloomberg’s Carlyn Kolker on Friday tees up a nice piece on the bunch — or at least three of the four (Steve Schulman declined to comment to Kolker).

For all those who’ve forgotten, the four — Lerach, Weiss, Schulman and Bershad — have all wrapped up their prison terms. All four pleaded guilty to paying kickbacks to clients to bring lucrative cases.

So what are the once fearsome foursome (all of whom have been disbarred) up to?

Mel Weiss is living in Boca Raton, Florida, and trying to figure out his next act. "I am enjoying my freedom,” Weiss told Kolker. "I am honing my skills at golf. I am thinking about the experience I just went through and what I should do with it." According to Kolker, “Weiss said he is practicing his golf swing, doing charitable work and considering assisting the Haitian art community, all while reflecting on his prison experience.”

Lerach, on the other hand, said he plans to teach a course titled "Regulation of Free Market Capitalism — Why We Have Failed," at a law school. He declined to tell Bloomberg the name of the school. Writes Kolker:

He is also planning to lecture at universities and work with a progressive think-tank, Lerach said in a phone interview from a ski vacation in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. His future also includes trout fishing in Alaska and exploring his roots in Bavaria, he said.

Bershad’s seemed to say less about his situation: "Right now I am getting my life together," he said from his home in Montclair, New Jersey. "I am happy and doing fine."

We also appreciated Weiss’s comments on prison life (we could work flashbacks into our reality series).

"At my age it's not easy," said Weiss of being incarcerated. "You have to get used to sleeping on a one-inch mattress on a metal frame, sharing toilets with 80 other guys. The food is not what you're used to. The medical facilities are vastly understaffed."

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 19, 2010 (boomark / email).