Now they soldier on. There have been rumblings that the firm kept the name Milberg so as not to trigger a dissolution clause in the original partnership agreement, an event that would require a payout of capital to former partners. In fact, two former partners of the firm, Steven Schulman and Robert Sugarman, brought arbitration proceedings in June 2006, claiming that such dissolution occurred when what was then Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach had a bicoastal divorce.

Does this smell of another Milberg "deal"? No way, says Dumain. "The only way that the firm can be dissolved is if the firm's executive committee votes to dissolve the firm," he says. At any rate, the arbitration has not proceeded vigorously. It is moribund, and an arbitration panel has not yet been selected.

The Milberg name refers to Lawrence Milberg, who died in 1989. Then 76, Milberg suffered a heart attack while playing tennis near his home in Great Neck, Long Island. Milberg was one of the unnamed co-conspirators in the kickback scheme, a fact admitted by the firm when it signed its plea agreement with the prosecutors.

So why continue with the name of a dead felon?

"We took the name because there is great value in the name," said Dumain. "The name still represents high-quality and tenacious work on behalf of our clients."

And the firm, by the way, is very much alive and well, Dumain says. There was a large defection out the door when the indictment against the firm was handed up in June 2006, he said. But that stopped in early 2007, and the firm now has 65 lawyers and 175 other employees. Dumain himself was co-lead counsel in the securities class action against Tyco, which landed a $3.2 billion recovery.

The firm has survived despite attacks on all sides by competitors and defense counsel attempting to use the pending indictment against it. But more often than not, the lawyers for the defense used the indictment against the firm—lawyers from powerful Wall Street firms like Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy.

But an opinion from September 2007, in a case called In re Flag Telecom Holdings Ltd. Securities Litigation, put these complaints to rest. Judge William Conner had some fun with Milbank Tweed's complaints that the firm would "face difficult decisions about how to manage the case" if the firm was "convicted" or "collapses before a criminal trial begins." Judge Conner had a simple response: "Defendants' argument is, to say the least, unpersuasive."

These days, the Milberg name is part of a larger crowd of firms. Firms such as Grant & Eisenhofer and Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman carry most of the buzz in securities class actions. But Milberg is holding its own.

Even so, Judge John Walter of the federal district court in Los Angeles, who approved the firm's deal to avoid prosecution in the case, did so fairly reluctantly. "I am not a hundred percent convinced that a dismissal of all the charges based on the case disposition agreement that allows the firm to escape the consequences of the guilty plea to these charges is an appropriate disposition of the case," he noted at a July 14 hearing. But he also said, "In ruling on this motion, the court's discretion is extremely limited."

But Judge Walter tipped his hat to the current members of the firm. And he commended the prosecutors for "allowing those good people who didn't have any involvement in the conspiracy to earn a living."