May 29 (Reuters) - For some of the top securities class-action law firms in the United States, 2011 was a golden year, despite an overall downturn in settlements.

Thanks to class-action settlements in lawsuits against Wells Fargo, WellCare Health Plans and Washington Mutual, New York-based Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman secured investors $1.37 billion, according to a report released earlier this month by Institutional Shareholders Services Inc.

That's up 37 percent from 2010, a jump mirrored at rival plaintiffs shops Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Labaton Sucharow.

"Settlements are starting to rebound in magnitude," said Darren Robbins, a founding partner of Robbins Geller.

The ranking by ISS's Securities Class Action Services is part of an annual report looking at the top 50 plaintiffs firms in terms of total recoveries for investors. The report, which has been produced for a decade, is one of the few measures gauging the state of the securities class-action bar.

The report measures settlement tallies for individual firms, rather than class actions as a whole. A study by Cornerstone Research released in March found that class-action settlements industrywide were at a 10-year low of $1.4 billion.

A PROFITABLE CONCENTRATION

How a few firms landed bigger settlement totals during a down year is apparently explained by what the Cornerstone report described as the "increased concentration" of plaintiffs firms as lead counsel. Three firms -- Robbins Geller, Labaton Sucharow and Bernstein Litowitz -- accounted for more than half of all settlements in 2011.

ISS's reports have reflected a similar trend, Robbins said.

"If you look at it generally, there's two or three firms that are always at the top," he said.

David Kessler, a partner at Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, attributed the concentration to the growing role of institutional investors such as municipal and union pension funds, following enactment of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those institutional investors are "going to people they are comfortable with," he said.

"The firms that have had success in the past are being picked more and more and are growing," said Kessler, whose firm ranked No. 4 in the ISS study.

The top firms on the list also tend to be bigger and better staffed for multiple cases, said Lawrence Sucharow, chairman of Labaton Sucharow. His firm, for example, has at least seven investigators on staff, Sucharow said.

BIG PAYDAYS

Settlements can translate to big paydays for plaintiffs firms, which receive court-ordered percentages of their recoveries. The 13 cases that Bernstein Litowitz settled as lead or colead counsel in 2011 resulted in awards for attorneys' fees and expenses of nearly $300 million, according to court records. (In cases in which it had cocounsel, the firm would not have received all of that money.)

Bernstein's tally included a $627 million settlement in litigation against Wachovia, now owned by Wells Fargo, and a $208.5 million settlement with Washington Mutual, which JPMorgan Chase & Co acquired in 2008. Kessler Topaz and Robbins Geller were colead counsel on the Wachovia case.

Of the 50 firms ranked by ISS, 27 of them secured more than one settlement. Thirty-two of the firms did not rank last year.

Three plaintiffs firms -- Holzer Holzer & Fistel; Jensen Shawa Solomon Duguid Hawkes; and Sutts, Strosberg -- tied for the bottom of the top 50, each with a single settlement worth $5.2 million. Of those firms the only one to appear in last year's rankings was Sutts, Strosberg.

After Bernstein Litowitz, the report ranked Robbins Geller second in 2011 with $1.14 billion in settlements, followed by Labaton Sucharow with $1.04 billion. The top five were rounded out by Kessler Topaz at No. 4 with $851.7 million and, at No. 5, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro with $435 million. None of these firms ranked among the top 10 in the previous year.

Robbins Geller ranked first in terms of the number of settlements, 28, reaching an average value of $40.8 million. Bernstein Litowitz had fewer settlements, a total of 13, yet ranked No. 1 in terms of their average size, $105.9 million.

"We bring probably no more than 20 percent of the cases our competitors bring; that's been the case for years," said Max Berger, a senior partner at Bernstein Litowitz. "I always feel it's important to start with a good product, what we consider to be a solid claim that we could sink our teeth into and get great results."

Lawyers within the plaintiffs bar caution against using the ISS annual ranking as the sole measure of where their firms stand. It only counts finalized securities class-action settlements, leaving out other big cases that plaintiffs firms might handle in fields like antitrust and consumer law. Also, settlements can be counted towards a firm's tally regardless of whether it was the only firm handling a case.

(Reporting By Nate Raymond)

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