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Bill Lerach, the once-powerful attorney set to be sentenced today after pleading guilty to conspiring to obstruct justice with a class action kickback scheme, can’t be all bad: After all, our own Ben Stein—along with Sen. Carl Levin and Ralph Nader!—has written a letter attesting to the man’s character to accompany a leniency filing. Nevertheless, the ruminations of some of these character witnesses unearthed by the Wall Street Journal’s always fantastically entertaining Law Blog seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Here are a couple examples:

When he bought a new car, he gave me his Maxima instead of trading it in.–Kathryn Lichnovsky, Lerach’s secretary for almost 30 years.

Every day Mr. Lerach makes us a big pot of coffee and gives us juice, fruits, pastries, cookies.–Encarnacion Lopez Sanchez, Lerach’s gardener 

I will close by providing the Court with Mr. Lerach’s response to my pleas to return as his associate in the summer of 2006 . . . ‘Money makes people a******* Mary. That is why I would not pay you the money you insisted you were entitled to.--Mary Blasy, a former associate with Lerach’s firm. 

Ah, so sometimes cheapness is just another method of character building. Interesting. I thought that line of thinking went out of style at the end of A Christmas Carol. Judging my own experiences in journalism along those lines I realize I should technically be a much better person than I am by now or at least less of an a******, anyway. Or perhaps I have only gotten to the level where I deserve a used Maxima. It is so difficult to judge one's own worth.

An aside: These references remind me of the online Receipt Museum maintained by Todd Barry, probably the greatest comedian of this generation.

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Law