Silk adds that subprime lending will not be the only target. He expects cases to be filed over losses on other "nontraditional" mortgage products, such as near-prime Alt-A mortgages, as well as cases relating to collateralized debt obligations and asset-backed securities. 

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"The disclosures and write-offs relating to those are all coming out and working their way through the system," Silk says. "There is going to be litigation." 

Silk's firm is representing the lead plaintiff in the American Home Mortgage class action and has filed cases against MBIA, Citigroup, and Ambac Financial Group. The firm's pension-fund clients are "looking at the Bear Stearns situation" with an eye to litigation. 

"I see the trend continuing," he says. "The damage, collateral and direct, is going to continue for the foreseeable future. There was a fundamental breakdown in the risk controls and corporate transparency that investors are entitled to." 

Meanwhile, Cornerstone Research, a consulting company that also tracks securities class actions, said on Monday that the number of lawsuits settled out of court rose by 21 percent last year. But, it added, the aggregate value of those settlements plummeted 60 percent from the all-time high of $17.2 billion in 2006. 

The 2006 figure, however, was inflated by a $7.2 billion Enron settlement and a $3.7 billion payout in a class action against Tyco International. 

Those kinds of blockbuster accounting-fraud cases may be gone, but it looks as though class-action lawyers will be targeting the cream of Wall Street for the remainder of the year.