THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES HOW THE LAWYER–JUDGE BIAS plays out in a high-profile, real-life scenario – the treatment of the lawyers in the Enron debacle. No doubt the Enron shareholders, along with the thousands of low-level Enron employees who lost their jobs and retirement savings, feel that the civil and criminal punishments meted out to Enron executives and accountants were light compared with the harm Enron caused. Imagine their chagrin at the fact that the Enron lawyers walked away relatively unscathed. Why did the accountants and executives face devastating financial and criminal penalties while Enron's lawyers exited with little more than a cash payment to the bankruptcy estate?

Lawyers were intimately involved in the accounting shenanigans that bankrupted Enron and destroyed approximately $68 billion in wealth. Many of the Enron executives faced criminal charges and are themselves bankrupt. Enron's primary outside auditor, Arthur Andersen, was accused of criminal fraud and eventually collapsed as an ongoing concern. In contrast, the two main law firms that helped make the Enron accounting possible are still thriving.