We’ve seen a bundle of bankers go down for shady dealings in this crisis and one or two lawyers as well; here’s a trio of tales where lawyers have landed in hot water…

James Gansman, a lawyer and former Ernst & Young partner in New York, has been found guilty of insider trading after he passed information about proposed buyouts on to a friend. Gansman worked in E&Y’s transaction division and advised companies on human resources issues arising during mergers and acquisitions. That’s not all he did though – between May 2006 and July 2007, he passed information about seven forthcoming takeovers to his friend Donna Murdoch who then profited from share dealings to the tune of $400,000. Murdoch was found guilty of securities fraud on December 15 and then testified against Gansman. He was then found guilty of six counts of securities fraud and faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a fine of up to £3.3 million. Gansman resigned from EY in October 2007 and is due to be sentenced on October 1.

In another suspiscious tale, two enforcement lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission, are being investigated for possible insider trading according to a report by the regulator’s inspector general. He studied two years’ worth of e-mails and brokerage records from the two lawyers, which he said revealed “suspicious activities, appearances of improprieties and evidence of possible trading on nonpublic information”. Apparently one of the lawyers spent much of her working day e-mailing and searching the internet about stocks, the report said, and testified that financial markets were her “main hobby and passion”. Both lawyers discussed trading and stock markets over lunch as well as their SEC investigation cases, and one e-mailed stock tips to his brother and sister-in-law from his SEC account. Hmmm, any professional conuct issues there? Source

Finally, Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins is accused of helping to conceal a $2.4bn (£1.6bn) corporate fraud in the Refco fraud case. Collins headed up the firm’s derivatives group but is currently on leave. His lawyer has claimed his client was kept out of the loop on the hidden debt and sham transactions, reports The New York Law Journal .