Wall Street firms will keep their ears wide open to hear how Lehman Brothers Holdings’ innovative program of calling clients is working. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is experimenting by having stock analysts pick up the phone and pick the brains of certain clients – including hedge fund managers and traders at brokerages – rather than prepare and publish research reports. If it works and catches on at other firms, suggests the WSJ, it could result in a major change the field of stock research, which is already suffering from the aftershocks of scandal a few years back. Regulators will be listening, too, to make sure analyst using this approach, spearheaded at Lehman by Bart McDade, don’t use the information they get from clients for their own in-house benefit.