They're not going well for plaintiffs, reports the WSJ (sub-$). After the 2003 settlement in which 10 Wall Street firms agreed to pay $1.4 billion in fines and restitution over charges of having improperly tilted their stock research to favor underwriting clients, class action lawyers "spen[t] millions of dollars on television and newspaper ads in search of people who lost money on WorldCom and other stocks mentioned in the settlement." But "[s]ecurities-industry arbitration panels have rejected the vast majority of cases decided so far." "'We bet big, and so far we have lost big,' says Richard Lott, an attorney with Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Echsner & Proctor, a large class-action firm in Pensacola, Fla. Most of the arbitration cases stemming from the stock-research settlement have been filed by Mr. Lott's firm and another pair of lawyers, James Hooper and Robert Weiss, who are based in Orlando and Jericho, N.Y., respectively."