Smaller Law Firms Benefit from Subprime Litigation
Conflicts of interest are keeping large law firms out of litigation on behalf of burned subprime investors, giving more opportunities to smaller firms that specialize in banking and finance.
Peter Calamari, managing partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, told the National Law Journal that the subprime crisis has a wide reach. “Virtually every bank has a piece of the subprime collapse, so there is a lot of litigation popping up, and the big firms are conflicted out of that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Legal Week reports that one big law firm has decided it may handle litigation against financial institutions after all. Reed Smith has announced it will end a ban on such lawsuits and decide whether to accept them on a case-by-case basis.
The NLJ story says smaller firms that are benefiting from subprime litigation include:
• Kobre & Kim, a19-lawyer firm in New York and Washington in which five of the six partners are former prosecutors. It represents Deutsche Bank A.G. and companies with claims against investment and banking houses.
• Rich & Intelisano of New York, a four-lawyer firm that is handling several claims related to troubled Bear Stearns.
• Girard Gibbs, a 15-lawyer firm in San Francisco that is representing banks in Germany and France that expect defaults in their bond holdings.
