Litigation is never easy—and it’s particularly hard when the target is a law firm.
Nonetheless, as of 2026, a number of major law firms have been the subject of big-ticket litigation claims, with a few offering millions of dollars in settlements to make the matters go away.
The cases extend well beyond garden-variety malpractice claims and include fallout from large corporate bankruptcies, the alleged mishandling of data breaches affecting thousands of people, allegations of politically motivated race or religious discrimination and accusations of outright fraud and corruption.
Here’s a rundown of some of the highest-profile recent cases.
FTX Fallout
The 2022 collapse and subsequent bankruptcy of one-time cryptocurrency high-flyer FTX Trading Ltd. and the fall of its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, now serving a prison term for fraud, are proving expensive for Fenwick & West. Fenwick, which represented FTX, agreed in May to pay $54 million to settle claims in a multidistrict litigation over the crypto exchange’s alleged fraud.
Like Fenwick, other professional services firms and celebrity endorsers were named in the case for their role in enabling and promoting FTX while it fleeced investors. Along with Fenwick, accounting company Prager Metis said it would pay nearly $12 million and former Miami Heat star Udonis Haslem said he would pay $420,000 to settle the cases.
According to news accounts, attorneys for the plaintiffs approved of the Fenwick deal. Fenwick said in a statement that it was not aware of the fraud and “disputes wrongdoing of any kind.” A judge must now approve the settlements.
Bankruptcy Imbroglio
In fallout from another bankruptcy case, Kirkland & Ellis, Jackson Walker and Brown Rudnick were named in a potential class action brought in January by a Florida investment firm, EJS Investment Holdings.
EJS alleges the coverup of a romantic relationship between a Jackson Walker partner and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones during the bankruptcy of a major energy company. Jones resigned from the bench in 2023 just ahead of an ethics probe into allegations that he was providing favorable treatment to Jackson Walker clients because of his relationship with the partner, Elizabeth Freeman.
EJS claims that it was unfairly treated in the Chapter 11 exit plan for Chesapeake Energy. EJS, in court documents, claims that Jones and Freeman, who are both named in the suit, Jackson Walker and lead counsel Kirkland “preyed upon distressed entities for their own considerable financial and reputational benefit,” leveraging the secret romantic relationship “to obtain employment opportunities, collect large fees and control mega-bankruptcy outcomes, while evading the scrutiny that would have come with notice of the disqualifying conflict.”
The defendants have all denied EJS’s claims. EJS sued in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. It is being represented by the Bandas Law Firm.
Breach Battles
Data breaches have plagued the legal industry in recent years—and law firms have faced a wave of post-attack litigation from clients and others whose personal information has been stolen.
In one of the latest cases, filed May 22, Wiley Rein is fighting a proposed class action over a data breach that occurred in 2024 and 2025. According to the court documents, Wiley said it was hacked by a group with apparent ties to the Chinese government.
Florida-based lead plaintiff Derrick Burkett said the breach put his finances in jeopardy and that soon after Wiley was hacked and his data was stolen, at least 19 fraudulent charges appeared on his MetLife estate account. Wiley, the suit claims, should have been aware of cyberthreats, taken greater care to avoid them and notified those affected more quickly than it did. Lawyers from Farrell & Fuller and Motley Rice are asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to certify a class that may reach into the thousands.
Two additional Am Law 200 firms have been hit with data breach class actions in the last several months. Kelley, Drye & Warren, was sued in August following a March 2025 breach and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman was sued in November over an April 2025 attack. Both data breaches allegedly exposed personal data of thousands of people and like Wiley, both firms are accused of leaving victims open to cyberfraud and failing to act quickly enough to notify them of the attack.
The proposed class action against Kelley Drye was filed in New York state court in Manhattan by lawyers from Schröder, Joseph & Associates and Strauss Borrelli. The Pillsbury case was filed by lawyers from Millberg in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to Reuters, Pillsbury is being represented by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, which paid $8 million in 2024 to settle a data breach suit.
High-Profile Employment Fights
Labor and employment-related claims against firms have been making headlines as well. Among the most prominent cases:
• In early May 2026, a lawyer filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleging that DLA Piper withdrew an employment offer because of her participation in pro-Palestinian protests at Northwestern University. The lawyer, Yasmeen Elagha, also alleged she faced a hostile work environment while she was a summer associate at the firm and was discriminated against because of her race, religion and national origin.
According to Bloomberg, Elagha, who is Arab, Muslim and Palestinian, said in court documents she was questioned about her race, ethnicity and country of origin, her views on Israel and Palestine and was pressured to attend summer associate activities where drinking alcohol was the central activity.
Elagha was offered a full-time position at the firm in August 2023 and was slated to begin work in October 2024, according to court filings. After her participation in campus protests over Israel’s actions in Gaza came to light, the firm did not respond to her queries about the job and terminated her in July 2024, Bloomberg reported. A DLA spokesperson told Bloomberg that the firm “decided against hiring Ms. Elagha as a result of her own unacceptable conduct.” Elagha’s case was filed May 11 by Abraham Law & Consulting, Naser Legal and Bahour Law.
• Troutman Pepper Locke, in April 2026, settled a $35 million claim brought by a Black associate who said she was fired after complaining about racial discrimination. The case had been slated to go to trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in May. The associate, Gita Sankano, said in court documents that she was the only Black lawyer in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office when she was hired in 2019 and was subjected to “aggressive emails questioning her cognitive ability” from a partner that were “outrageously demeaning, dehumanizing and demoralizing.” Reuters reported that Sankano also alleged that she was not given credit for her billable hours and left out of associate training.
After she notified Troutman Pepper’s human resources team, Sankano said the firm took months to investigate and eventually terminated her because of her complaint. Reuters reported that the firm has maintained that Sankano was fired for performance issues. Details of the settlement were confidential. Attorneys from Wigdor represented Sankano. Littler Mendelson represented Troutman Pepper.
• A California state appeals court in February said Gibson Dunn & Crutcher must pay the retirement benefits to a former partner, Mark Perry, who left the firm after nearly three decades for Weil Gotshal & Manges. The dispute has stretched for four years. An arbitrator had previously ruled that Perry had retired, not resigned and was entitled to his retirement payments. A Los Angeles trial court agreed in 2024, saying Gibson Dunn owed Perry $557,000, as well as future retirement payments. The appellate panel upheld the ruling. Michael von Loewenfeldt of the Complex Appellate Litigation Group represented Perry.
Plaintiffs Firms Targeted
Two major corporations—FedEx and Uber Technologies—have launched lawsuits against plaintiffs-side firms recently, accusing them of conspiring with clients and medical providers to create fraudulent personal injury claims.
In April, FedEx sued New York-based Ikhilov Law Group and the firm’s name partner Zorik “Erik” Ikhilov, along with several doctors, chiropractors, pain management and radiology providers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The company, in court documents, accused the law firm of taking a leading role in a long-running scheme that targeted delivery trucks with staged, low-impact collisions.
FedEx said that the accidents were exaggerated, injuries fabricated and medical documentation falsified to inflate potential lawsuit recoveries and insurance claims. The company, represented by The Willis Law Group, is pursuing its claims under federal anti-racketeering law and also claims the defendants engaged in common law fraud, deceptive trade practices and were unjustly enriched.
Reuters reported that Uber has filed multiple similar claims in federal courts in Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia against personal injury firms, alleging they submitted fraudulent bills with several medical providers. Uber said in a statement to Reuters that “a network of lawyers, doctors and chiropractors were turning minor accidents into high-dollar lawsuits in states like California, ‘where insurance costs are already out of control.’”
In a Reuters article on the Uber suits, the trial lawyers’ group American Association of Justice said Uber and other companies are resorting to “intimidation tactics against those who stand up to them.”
Other Cases to Watch
Among other recent law firm-related lawsuits worth watching are:
• A Multi-Billion-Dollar Divorce Battle. The former wives of a pair of Florida brothers are seeking more than $2 billion in two suits filed against and Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough and one of its equity partners, claiming conflicts of interest in their divorce cases, according to a May 21, 2026, report by Law.com. The two women said the lawyer “played a role in estate planning and asset protection work that harmed the women’s financial interests before and during their divorces,” Law.com said.
The cases are pending in Palm Beach County, Fla. Circuit Court. Both women are being represented by Boca Raton, Fla.’s Katzman, Wasserman, Bannardini & Rubinstein.
• A Litigation Funding Fight: Susman Godfrey and litigation funder Longford Capital are locked in a lengthy legal battle with Arigna Technology, a Dublin, Ire.-based patent owner, over proceeds from patent infringement settlements. In January 2026, Arigna sued Susman and Longford, asking the court to overturn an arbitrator’s decision that awarded Longford $32 million for providing case financing. The suit also demands that Susman return an additional $5.5 million in settlement funds being held in escrow.
Reuters reported that the dispute offers rare public information about patent litigation funding. In court documents, Arigna recounts how it hired Susman in 2020 to enforce its patents, as well as Susman’s entry into a financing agreement with Longford. In 2023, Arigna sued in federal court in Delaware over the way Longford was calculating its share of the settlement proceeds. The court said the case should be decided in arbitration. The arbitrator found for Longford and an arbitration panel upheld that finding, Reuters reported.
Arigna is represented by Charhon Callahan Robson & Garza in the suit, which was filed in state court in Harris County, Texas.
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David L. Brown is a legal affairs writer and consultant, who has served as head of editorial at ALM Media, editor-in-chief of The National Law Journal and Legal Times and executive editor of The American Lawyer. He consults on thought leadership strategy and creates in-depth content for legal industry clients and works closely with Best Law Firms® as senior content consultant.