The Wall Street Journal Law Blog quotes Professor Joseph Grundfest in a piece about why fewer securities class actions are being filed, according to Stanford Law School’s Securities Class Action Clearinghouse:

It’s simple: there’s less fraud, according to Joseph Grundfest (pictured), the director of the class-action clearinghouse. “With increased enforcement activity by the SEC and Department of Justice, we have seen an increase in both the probability of [fraud] detection and associated penalties,” Grundfest said, according to a summary of the survey.

Grundfest pooh-poohs the idea that the indictment of Milberg Weiss, for allegedly paying kickbacks to clients to induce them to file cases, has cast a generalize chilled over the plaintiffs bar that has contributed to the drop in filings. There’s no “Milberg effect,” he says.