Once upon a time, plaintiffs lawyers in the IPO securities class action had visions of billions dancing in their heads. Today, they're quite happy taking $586 million.

V&E came through in a big way for its client, the jilted merger partner. Huntsman ended up with a billion-dollar settlement from Hexion--and V&E collected the lion's share of $43 million in legal fees paid out by Huntsman.

The Tousa ruling created a tsunami of backlash last year, after a bankruptcy court judge ruled the homebuilder's $450 million loan repayment was a fraudulent transfer. Now a federal district court judge says the bankruptcy judge was dead wrong. And he's not pulling any punches.

Once upon a time, Paul Daugerdas generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Jenkens & Gilchrist by blessing dubious tax shelter deals. Then the feds got wind of his role. In 2007 Daugerdas's tax shelter work led to the demise of his onetime firm. Now it's led to his indictment on tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

The former prosecutor was brought in to revive the SEC enforcement division at perhaps the lowest moment in the agency's history. Has he succeeded? Not yet, but he's working on it.

Deloitte's lawyers at Sidley Austin persuaded a judge in Manhattan that their client was duped like everyone else by alleged fraud at Longtop Financial, the U.S.-listed Chinese software company that collapsed in 2011 under the weight of a massive accounting scandal.