The rise and fall of Gene Cauley

Who would have dreamed that a protege of Bill Lerach would wind up later copping to a felony rap resulting from ethical infractions? (Wait, don’t answer.)

At a barbershop in 1994, [Cauley] says, he picked up Forbes magazine and saw a profile of Lerach; it was the famous article, where the attorney was quoted as saying, “I have the greatest practice . . . I have no clients.”

Cauley approached Lerach and was soon launched in a thriving class action practice (“His usual way to deal with things was to yell and bang things and threaten,” said a fellow plaintiffs lawyer, Glen DeValerio of Boston.) It came crashing down under revelations that the Little Rock, Ark.-based lawyer took $9 million from clients’ settlements to spend on firm overhead and unrelated investments. [Koppel/WSJ, ABA Journal, interview-based WSJ Law Blog story first, second]

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