Milken, Figure in Insider Case, Meets With Criminal Lawyers

Michael R. Milken, the investment star who has been caught up in the government’s continuing investigation into illegal Wall Street trading practices, has been meeting with some of the nation’s leading white-collar criminal lawyers.

Milken, who heads Drexel Burnham Lambert’s “junk” bond trading operation in Beverly Hills, approached the prominent New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison about its representing him shortly after he was subpoenaed by the Securities and Exchange Commission last month in connection with the Ivan F. Boesky insider trading case, a Paul, Weiss partner said Tuesday.

A subpoena is only a request for information and not a charge of wrongdoing. Milken is lining up his own lawyers upon the advice of the law firm representing Drexel, a move that isn’t unusual in situations where both a company and some of its employees have been subpoenaed.

Since then, Paul, Weiss partner Arthur Liman has been holding discussions with Milken. And the two met at Milken’s office in Beverly Hills on Monday, according to a secretary in Liman’s office. But even some of Liman’s partners said Tuesday that they don’t know whether Liman has agreed to take Milken as a client.

Liman also represents Dennis B. Levine, the former Drexel managing director whose arrest last May led directly to charges last month that stock speculator Ivan F. Boesky made $50 million in illegal profits from Levine tips.

Milken also is known to have held discussions with prominent Washington lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, a former part owner of the Washington Redskins football team. But it could not immediately be learned whether Williams has been retained by Milken.

Meanwhile, the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin confirmed that it has been retained in the Boesky investigation by someone who has been subpoenaed. The firm, which has assigned attorney Theodore Miller to the case, would not identify the client.

Those known to have received subpoenas in Los Angeles for information about the Boesky-Levine case are Milken; his brother, Lowell Milken, also a Drexel employee, and Boyd L. Jefferies, head of the Los Angeles stock brokerage bearing his name.

A fourth firm, New York’s Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle, said it has been approached about representing someone in this case and hinted that the person’s identity, as well as more big news in this case, will be disclosed Friday. “You’ll want to call me on Friday,” said Curtis, Mallet partner Eliot Lauer.