The longstanding criminal investigation and finally the indictment of the class action plaintiffs’ firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman has been a common topic on this blog, so it has been with interest that I have been following the WSJ’s Nathan Koppel, Peter Lattman and Ashby Jones’ excellent coverage (see here and here) over the past week of the plea deal rumblings for the firm and at least one of the prominent attorneys ensnared in the prosecution. In short, David Bershad is supposedly negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors that reportedly could have a domino effect on several current and former partners of the firm, including Mel Weiss and Bill Lerach.

Inasmuch as the plaintiffs’ class action securities fraud bar tends to be a lightning rod for criticism regarding vexatious, costly and unproductive litigation, there hasn’t been much public support for Milberg Weiss and the individuals involved in this episode.

But as Larry Ribstein points out in this wise post, the Milberg Weiss criminal case is not only thick with ironies and contradictions, the issues involved in the case are not easy to sort out.

Encouraging the government to use its overwhelming prosecutorial power as the default regulatory tool to deal with the unpopular businesspersons or business lawyers of the moment is not as neat and tidy as it may seem on the surface, despite what this narrow-minded WSJ ($) editorial suggests.