For a lawsuit-kickback scheme that stretched almost three decades, crooked lawyer William S. Lerach deserves the two years he's about to spend behind bars. He deserves more. He deserves the disbarment that's coming his way. He deserves to pay the nearly $8 million in penalties imposed upon him.

Other lawyers who once looked up to Lerach and his style of litigation should learn from his tale: Winning at all costs ultimately might mean losing everything.

Lerach, of San Diego, was one of the most successful plaintiff's attorneys in the nation, a partner at the large and powerful Milberg Weiss firm for 28 years. Until Lerach broke away from the firm in 2004, he and the other partners were perverting the justice system by recruiting a few select people and their relatives to file securities-fraud lawsuits and then collecting millions from those plaintiffs when the settlements came in.

The firm made $250 million from at least 150 such lawsuits, which were filed for investors against corporations such as Xerox and United Airlines, after their stock prices had suffered declines. One man that Milberg Weiss recruited, Beverly Hills eye surgeon Steven Cooperman, was lead plaintiff in 60 lawsuits.

Lerach was sentenced on Monday. Judge John F. Walter of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said the kickback scheme corrupted the law firm "in the most evil way."

Lerach is disgraced. He told a Wall Street Journal reporter recently that his subscriptions to several newspapers, which he once used to find his next lawsuit targets, will come in handy again: Newspapers, particularly sports sections, are in high demand among convicts, he said, and can be bartered.

So far, seven people have pleaded guilty to the class-action scam, including three former partners of the firm. Firm co-founder Melvyn I. Weiss has pleaded not guilty and goes to trial in August.

Lerach was one of the most aggressive and prolific lawyers of securities law. Corporations lived in fear of him and his firm and even had a verb for when he would bring a suit at a drop of the stock price: You've been Lerached. Critics called the way he and his partners expanded the boundaries of successful securities litigation "legalized extortion."

Far from "standing up for the little guy," these lawsuits drive up the cost of doing business in this country, affecting hiring and wages, and they also reduce the profits for shareholders.

If this large firm, the most revered within its specialty, was perpetrating such a scheme, how widespread is this practice? Changes in 1995 in the laws pertaining to securities litigation have made fraud difficult, but not impossible. A congressional investigation of such practices is warranted.