Lerach's fall represents a stunning development for one of the nation's most prominent – and wealthiest – plaintiff lawyers. He specialized in class-action lawsuits against corporate America.

Lerach oversaw litigation that recovered more than $7 billion in settlements arising from the Enron fraud. He filed tobacco lawsuits against R.J. Reynolds over its Joe Camel advertising campaign and antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and the Nasdaq market. His personal income in 1998 was more than $13 million, according to evidence presented in a 1999 civil lawsuit.

The federal investigation that began seven years ago was focused on misconduct at Lerach's previous law firm, now known as Milberg Weiss.

Lerach's single conspiracy count resulted from information that a former Milberg Weiss law partner, David Bershad, provided to prosecutors, according to one source familiar with the terms of Lerach's plea.

The conspiracy count alleges that Lerach knew that a Milberg Weiss client, former Los Angeles eye surgeon Steven Cooperman, lied when he swore under oath that he was not being paid to serve as a plaintiff in a lawsuit. Cooperman has been at the center of news accounts concerning Milberg Weiss since he went to jail in 2001 for art insurance fraud.

The New York law firm was indicted in July by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles, based on allegations that the firm made more than $11 million in unlawful payments to clients.

Prosecutors allege that Milberg Weiss orchestrated a scheme that recruited clients who bought shares or owned stock in companies the firm had targeted for lawsuits. Maintaining a stable of ready plaintiffs enabled Lerach and his team to be the first to file their lawsuits, which was a crucial advantage under the law at that time. Filing first enabled them to win control of the class-action cases and collect bigger slices of settlements and court victories. The clients were then rewarded with the improper payments, which were kept secret from the court and others.

The Milberg Weiss firm has denied any wrongdoing, as has Steven Schulman, a former partner charged in the case. Both are scheduled for trial next year.

Bershad, who oversaw the firm's finances, pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy, admitting that he and others agreed to hide payments the firm had arranged with certain plaintiffs in a variety of class-action lawsuits. As part of his plea, Bershad agreed to forfeit $7.75 million.

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, declined to comment. Lerach's defense attorney, John Keker, did not return a phone call to his office after business hours last night.

Terms of the plea agreement, which required months of negotiations, specify that Lerach is not required to cooperate with the government's continuing investigation.

The agreement also confirms that the Coughlin Stoia law firm will face no criminal charges or liability in the matter, a provision that became a sticking point in talks between the two sides.

Another issue was Lerach's request for a binding deal so that if the court rejects the proposed plea agreement for some reason, either side can withdraw from the agreement.

Prosecutors began scrutinizing Milberg Weiss and Lerach in 2000, examining thousands of lawsuits that spanned a 20-year period.

Ironically, Lerach began his career as a corporate lawyer in Pittsburgh.

He switched sides, though, when he moved to San Diego in 1975 to set up a one-room outpost for Milberg Weiss. As a plaintiff lawyer, he put everything at risk by taking cases on contingency.

In the ensuing decades, Lerach established San Diego as Milberg Weiss' West Coast headquarters, and supervised the firm's operations as co-chair, with Mel Weiss, of the law firm's management committee.

Lerach's ferocious tactics and penchant for invective, however, made him a lightning rod for America's captains of industry – especially among the Silicon Valley technology companies that were his favorite targets.

He often compared Milberg Weiss to a private enforcement arm of the Securities and Exchange Commission – except that it was unburdened by politics and put its own capital at risk.

In 1995, Congress passed legislation to curb many of the abusive practices in shareholder lawsuits that Lerach helped pioneer. The bill was officially known as the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, but in some congressional circles, it was better known as the "Get Lerach Act."

Cheng Cohen LLC, a Chicago-based firm focusing in corporate, franchise, technology and business litigation today announced that Andrew J. Sannes has joined the firm as counsel.

"Andrew's experience in mergers and acquisitions and hospitality will provide a valuable service to our growing client list," said Amy Cheng, partner of Cheng Cohen LLC.  "We welcome Andrew to our firm and his experience and enthusiasm will play an important role in the growth of Cheng Cohen."

Most recently, Sannes was an associate at DLA Piper US where he concentrated his practice in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity and general corporate matters. As a member of the Global Hospitality and Resort Group, Sannes has worked with blue chip hotel and resort companies on their business matters from acquisitions, negotiations and all development, financing, and ownership needs.

Sannes is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in History, and The John Marshall Law School where he received his J.D.

Founded in 2007, Cheng Cohen LLC provides experience in a wide range of legal matters including corporate, litigation and franchising. The firm innovatively tailors legal services to meet each of their clients' specific needs effectively and efficiently.

The company will also pay for the cost of setting up the trust and will work with the retiree committee to explore offering life insurance conversions when and if the underlying policies allow for conversions.

"We decided this was going to happen some time ago, and Labor Day seemed like a good time to do it," Lerach, 61, said in an interview. "I've worked a lifetime and a half and achieved what I wanted to achieve."

The famously mop-haired attorney declined to comment on the investigation.

Lerach's previous firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, was indicted in May 2006 by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles. Prosecutors allege the firm secretly paid more than $11 million in kickbacks to get people to take part in shareholder lawsuits, allowing its lawyers to be among the first to file lawsuits on behalf of shareholders and secure the lucrative position as lead plaintiffs' counsel.

The firm now known as Milberg Weiss and a former partner, Stephen Schulman, have pleaded not guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges and are scheduled to be tried in January 2008.

Another former partner, David Bershad, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in July and will be sentenced early next year. Former physician Steven G. Cooperman also pleaded to a federal conspiracy charge for his role in the alleged kickback scheme.

Lerach has not been charged.

Campos, 58, a Harlingen native and former Houston radio executive, will become partner-in-chief of the firm's Washington office.

Campos, who has served on the commission for five years, announced Aug. 9 he would return to the private sector.

Before joining the SEC, he was one of two principal owner/executives of El Dorado Communications, a Houston-based radio broadcasting company.

In his new job, Campos will represent companies in SEC enforcement matters and internal investigations, advise corporate boards about governance issues, and counsel private equity, hedge and mutual funds on regulatory matters.

"I look forward to advising companies on important issues related to SEC guidelines and corporate governance that will benefit the companies themselves, as well as continue to bolster investor confidence," Campos said in a prepared statement.

Ernie Brooks, president of Southfield-based Brooks Kushman P.C., an intellectual property and commercial law firm, died Thursday in a car crash in Farmington Hills.

Brooks, 64, founded the firm in 1983 along with partner James Kushman. They grew the firm from five attorneys and three secretaries to more than 50 attorneys and 60 support staff today.

A registered patent attorney and top-flight trial lawyer, Brooks was saluted last year as one of the nation's 10 best litigators by The National Law Journal, a weekly newspaper for the legal profession.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by the McCabe Funeral Home 31950 West 12 Mile Road, Farmington Hills.

Visitation continues 1 p.m.-9 p.m. Monday. Funeral services are 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Oliver W. Hill, a civil rights lawyer who was at the front of the legal effort that desegregated public schools, has died at age 100, a family friend said.

Hill died peacefully Sunday at his home during breakfast, said Joseph Morrissey, a friend of the Hill family.

In 1954, he was part of a series of lawsuits against racially segregated public schools that became the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which changed America's society by setting the foundation for integrated education.

"He was among the vanguard in seeking equal opportunity for all individuals, and he was steadfast in his commitment to effect change. He will be missed," said L. Douglas Wilder, who in 1989 became the nation's first elected black governor and was a confidant of Hill's. Wilder is now Richmond's mayor.

In 1940, Hill won his first civil rights case in Virginia, one that required equal pay for black and white teachers. Eight years later, he was the first black elected to Richmond's City Council since Reconstruction.

A lawsuit argued by Hill in 1951 on behalf of students protesting deplorable conditions at their high school for blacks in Farmville became one of five cases decided under Brown.

Those battles to end the Jim Crow era were dangerous ones for Hill and other civil rights leaders. Hill once received so many threats that he and his wife, Berensenia, would not allow their son to answer the telephone.

Nor did his battle for civil rights bring him wealth.

"We got very few fees for any of this," he said in a 1992 interview in The Richmond News Leader.

Hill never lost sight of the importance of the 1954 court ruling. Without it, he said in an interview in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this year, "I doubt (the Rev. Martin Luther) King would have gotten to first base."

Hill was born May 1, 1907, and his father left when Hill was an infant. His mother remarried, and Hill took the name of his stepfather. He moved with his family to Roanoke, where he spent much of his childhood.

His mother was a maid and his stepfather was a bellman at an exclusive resort about 70 miles from Roanoke. While his parents worked, Hill stayed with a family that he says instilled in him pride in his black heritage.

"Consequently, from childhood I developed personal esteem and expected white folks to treat me like they did one another in such settings," Hill wrote in his autobiography.

Later, his family moved to Washington, where he graduated from high school and graduated second in his class from Howard University's law school in 1933. The top law graduate that year was his friend Thurgood Marshall.

Marshall and Hill were part of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund team that fought the desegregation case to the Supreme Court. They remained close friends after Marshall became the court's first black justice.

He had recalled that when he started his law career, the court clerks in the building that housed the state Supreme Court of Appeals and law library allowed him to review legal books over weekends with the understanding that he would return them Monday mornings - "quite a gesture for those days," Hill said.

Two years ago, that building - now a century old and renovated - was renamed in Hill's honor. Though frail, he attended the 2005 dedication and, in a statement read by his son, said: "Who would have thought back in 1939, given the racial climate at the time, that 66 years later that building would be named after me."

Also in 2005, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People honored Hill with its Spingarn Award for distinguished achievement. Earlier winners included King, home run record holder Hank Aaron, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rosa Parks.

Though blind and in a wheelchair in recent years, Hill remained active in social and civil rights causes. He remained active in the day-to-day operations of his law firm until 1998. The next year, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, from President Bill Clinton.

In 2003, Hill urged a Virginia legislative committee to support a resolution expressing "profound regret" for what was known in the 1950s as "Massive Resistance," the state-led effort to defy the Supreme Court's desegregation order. Rather than desegregate, Virginia chose to close entire public schools.

This past May, state officials unveiled images of a memorial planned on the state Capitol grounds in Richmond that features Hill and the students who staged the 1951 walkout at Farmville. The $2.6 million monument is to be unveiled next July. He also greeted Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the state Capitol to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.