Ever since Visa and MasterCard reached a $7.2 billion agreement to resolve merchant claims over credit card "swipe fees," critics have been coming out of the woodwork. Now they've formally opposed the class action settlement in court, with the objector's lawyers at Constantine Cannon warning of "serious risks" if the deal is approved.

How to choose between a record $2 billion ICSID award and a $2 billion ICC award that's also in record terrain? We've decided to throw up our hands and pronounce a tie for the 2012 Global Lawyer of the Year. We're honoring Debevoise & Plimpton's David W. Rivkin for his ICSID win in Occidental v. Ecuador, and Shearman & Sterling's Henry Weisburg, for prevailing in The Dow Chemical Company's ICC feud with Kuwait.

A jury trial kicks off on Monday in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's fraud case against Fabrice Tourre, the only Goldman Sachs & Co. employee directly targeted by the agency in wake of the financial crisis. Here are four things to look for as the three-week trial unfolds.

Victims of convicted Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford finally got some good news Monday when their class claims against law firms and other advisors accused of aiding in the multibillion dollar fraud were restored. And that's bad news for the primary targets of the litigation, which include Proskauer Rose, Chadbourne & Parke, and Adams & Reese.

Shareholders' lawyers will get to see whatever the bank has turned over to Congress, the SEC, the New York attorney general, and other investigators--including, most likely, the communications between BofA and its lawyers that have already been turned over to the government.

Last March the Second Circuit seemed poised to dismiss Judge Jed Rakoff's rationale for scuttling Citigroup's $285 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Citi and the SEC should be feeling much less confident now.

Manhattan federal district court judge Jed Rakoff has been stewing for years over the SEC's approach to settlements with alleged Wall Street malefactors. In his ruling Monday rejecting the agency's settlement with Citigroup over is marketing of an ill-fated CDO, the judge finally boiled over.