A McGuireWoods partner has raised objections to his firm’s settlement of a class action against the nation’s largest provider of bar review courses — a move that threatens the $49 million deal that was to end the case.
The partner, Eliot Disner, a veteran antitrust litigator in McGuire’s Los Angeles office, has for two years represented a class of former BAR/BRI bar review students in an antitrust suit against West Publishing Corp., BAR/BRI’s corporate parent. In February, McGuireWoods inked a settlement with West Publishing and Kaplan Inc., one of West Publishing’s marketing partners. The settlement calls for West Publishing to pay $36 million and Kaplan to pay $13 million. After $12 million in attorney fees, this translates into an average award of $125 each to the roughly 300,000 law students who took West Publishing’s BAR/BRI courses between 1997 and 2006.
