GREAT FALLS, Va.—Feb. 15, 2005- LAWFUEL – The Law News Network -The results are in as LitWatch releases its most recent compilation of the race to the courthouse by the busiest securities fraud class action law firms in the country.
Overall, 18 plaintiffs’ firms made the list. In the race to be first, the top 3 “Win” rankings go to Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins (11 wins), Schiffrin & Barroway (7 wins), and a distant third to Schatz & Nobel (3 wins). In the overall medal count, Schatz & Nobel takes first place (20 mentions), followed by Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins (15 mentions) and a tie for third place between Schiffrin & Barroway and the Law Offices of Charles J. Piven (14 mentions each). Surprisingly, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, created after the breakup of Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, had only two wins and two places, far behind Lerach Coughlin, the other firm created in the split.
Nineteen firms represent the defendants, but the concentrations were far less dense. Only two firms – Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom (3 clients) and Sidley Austin Brown & Wood (2 clients) – represent clients in more than one of the tracked cases. The dispersion of these results hints at the overall competitiveness for defense representation in these class action suits and the lack of a short list of “go to” firm for these types of cases.
The details of the report can be found on LitWatch’s homepage at http://www.litwatch.com. The results were complied by LitWatch from its PiranhaWatch stories for 2004 Q4. PiranhaWatch is a unique system for tracking the legal feeding frenzy around new class action shareholder securities fraud lawsuits. LitWatch not only covers the content of the filings, but also uses the plaintiffs’ firms’ self-touting press releases to rank them “Win, Place, and Show” in their race to the courthouse. The compilation report also includes a summary of the firms representing the defendants in many of those suits.
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