By Bryan Burrough
Sunday, July 25, 2010; B07

CIRCLE OF GREED

The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Lawyer Who Brought Corporate America to Its Knees

By Patrick Dillon and Carl M. Cannon

Broadway. 532 pp. $28

"Circle of Greed" is a fat, ambitious book that tells the story of William Lerach, a disgraced San Diego lawyer who before running afoul of the law earned millions of dollars and almost as many headlines by suing companies on behalf of shareholders. Journalists Patrick Dillon and Carl M. Cannon, who met Lerach early in their careers, do a professional job tracing the arc of their subject's story and are especially good at providing the legal context for the rise of shareholder lawsuits during the 1970s and '80s. The New York firm that spearheaded this new breed of corporate ambulance chasers was Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes & Lerach; Lerach headed the West Coast operation. Just about any time a big American company got in any imaginable kind of trouble, Lerach or one of his partners rushed to a courthouse and sued. Tenacious and combative, they usually managed to arm-twist their targets into big settlements. It was Lerach and his firm who brought shareholder suits against Enron, winning a $7-billion settlement.

In doing so, however, Lerach and company cut their share of corners, especially by repeatedly, and illegally, paying a handful of sleazy businessmen who served as their token plaintiffs. Lerach's type of work was, and remains, controversial. To those who look askance at Big Business, he was a crusader against fraud and an ardent defender of stockholders everywhere. To the Fortune 500 and those who love them, he was a greenmailing wolf always on the prowl to pick off its weakest members.

Dillon and Cannon view Lerach as an historic figure, the man who, in the words of the book's subtitle, "brought corporate America to its knees." He didn't, of course, and that's part of the problem. Lerach forged massive legal settlements against the likes of Charles Keating and Enron, but he was less a company-chomping shark than a nettlesome pest who sucked the blood from the sick and wounded. The Fortune 500, especially the high-tech giants of Silicon Valley, where Lerach hunted often, rallied against his ilk, floating any number of California ballot initiatives to curb such litigation, and eventually persuaded Congress to pass a law effectively ending such lawsuits. But it's hard to argue that Lerach alone provoked any of this, or that in his absence any number of other plaintiff's lawyers wouldn't have been just as successful at doing what he did.

The deeper problem with the book, however, is that despite its 500-plus pages, Lerach himself never really comes to life. We get hundreds of pages devoted to his lawsuits, but his private life by and large remains offstage; every hundred pages or so he seems to pick up a new wife and a new mansion, but that's about it. Which is a shame, because while Lerach's rise isn't all that fascinating -- it's basically a numbing parade of lawsuits filed against one stupid company or another -- his fall is truly Shakespearean. Once Dillon and Cannon get to it about halfway through the book, the narrative momentum increases exponentially. "Circle of Greed" is never a true page-turner, but in its second half it becomes a far more entertaining book.

Lerach's downfall comes courtesy of two memorable characters, the first a University of Chicago professor named Daniel Fischel, who jousted with Lerach as a witness-for-hire in several lawsuits and then sued him for abusing the legal process. Dillon and Cannon wring this revenge plot for all the drama they can, as they should. Just as compelling is a side-plot involving one of Lerach's token plaintiffs, a Los Angeles attorney named Steven Cooperman, who resorts to having his own Picassos and Monets stolen for the insurance money. Once the paintings turn up, oddly, in a Cleveland-area self-storage unit, it's only a matter of time before Cooperman turns on Lerach, giving prosecutors all they need to send them both to prison.

"Circle of Greed" is a fine story, one many a lawyer will enjoy reading, but its lack of narrative drive and a compelling central character ultimately renders it a cut below the best business books.

Bryan Burrough is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of "The Big Rich."