Wall Street banks and brokerages hired a bevy of Big Law firms and top white-collar and securities enforcement lawyers as they negotiated a combined $1.1 billion settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over recordkeeping failures.

The SEC alleged “widespread and longstanding failures” by 11 major Wall Street firms and their employees to preserve electronic messages. Employees routinely communicated about business matters on their personal devices using banned messaging apps that often did not preserve the communications, according to SEC officials.