Most medical billing schemes are under-the-radar scams, like the $60 office visit that suddenly morphs into a $500 “consultation.”

But every so often, Douglas Falduto’s staff of 26 investigators stumbles over something more sinister — like the case of the phantom bunionectomies.

As New Jersey’s legal professionals work to build more diversity within the profession, officials at the state’s three law schools say they are aware of their role in that process, too.

The economic recession is having a devastating effect on the legal job market, and some fear it will also hurt efforts to make the profession more diverse.

When Thomas Jackson was choosing a law school in 1982, being a minority gave him an advantage. The University of Cincinnati School of Law was making a concerted effort to diversify its student body, so they made Jackson and other black applicants an offer they couldn’t refuse.

“The University of Cincinnati made it very difficult for us to go elsewhere,” said Jackson, president-elect of the Garden State Bar Association, an organization of black attorneys. “They offered us full rides to go there.”

Anyone dropping by David C. Freinberg’s office at the Newark law firm LeClairRyan has to notice the CEO-in-waiting’s neat desk, with a few carefully placed documents.

Freinberg, just tapped to succeed founder Gary LeClair as CEO in two years, said he’s always been an orderly person. “Growing up, I was the youngest of three boys, and my room was always the one that was in order, with the bed made up with hospital corners each morning before I left for school.”

The pressure ON New Jersey to address its massively underfunded public pension system intensified last week, following federal charges that the state committed fraud by failing to disclose its huge pension gap to buyers of state government bonds.

Legislators from both sides of the aisle agreed the state must address pension funding and related accounting problems, while business experts said the controversy is bad for the state’s economy.

Three New Jersey residents and a Florida man have been sentenced to prison or house arrest and were ordered to pay restitution for embezzling about $900,000 from Comstock Images, a photo imaging company that was based in Mountainside at the time it was scammed.

State police should patrol the Atlantic City casino district, Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May Court House) said last week.

Informing the government of misdeeds by your boss or co-workers could become a new route to wealth that bypasses the corporate ladder, thanks to a new whistle-blower law.

The new “qui tam,” or bounty, provisions of the recent federal financial reform law may spur more people to report white-collar crime — from insider trading to bribes — in hopes of getting up to 30 percent of the money recovered through government lawsuits.