Federal prosecutors in Boston and the SEC have unsealed a closely watched insider-trading case alleging that confidential merger information was funneled from lawyers at elite law firms into a wider trading network. The government’s allegations center on Nicolo Nourafchan and Robert Yadgarov, and reportedly tie the flow of nonpublic deal information to attorneys associated with Goodwin Procter and Latham Watkins.

What makes this case stand out is not just the scale of the alleged trading scheme, but the source of the information.