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• Position: Up Front - Lawyer Jonathan Alpert

Everybody hates lawyers, but they love their lawyer.

Tampa, Fla., lawyer Jonathan Alpert

Alpert is a gnome of a man, with stray black hairs poking out of his ears and the tip of his nose. I got to know him when I covered banking and reporting for The St. Petersburg Times. Even during Florida's long, hot summers, he would wear dark-wool three-piece suits.

Physically, he was unprepossessing, pudgy and slope-shouldered. But he had a sharp mind and gadfly personality. He didn't much care whether he got invited to chamber luncheons or Rotary. And he figured out early on that the big banks were charging into unfamiliar territory when they started, in the mid-'90s, selling securities and mutual funds in their lobbies. He filed a raft of class-action suits on behalf of customers who said they'd been duped into buying things they didn't understand.

Off the record, my bank sources grumbled that Alpert was an opportunist, a publicity hound, and that he wasn't interested in the well-being of the customers, typically retirees. What he wanted was the attorney fees that came with class-action verdicts and settlements.

I never understood the fuss. To me, the arrangement seemed pure capitalism. Alpert would take a big risk -- devoting hundreds of hours to a case -- in search of a big return and would get paid only if he won or if his case looked strong enough that the other side felt compelled to settle. Either way, his clients and hundreds, sometimes thousands, of similarly situated customers got their money back.

Plus, when the banks had to decide whether to fight or fold, they had the money to hire the best corporate lawyers. If Alpert's suits were frivolous, those guys would surely, quickly show it. In this issue of BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA, we...