Large Law Firms Research Articles

Proposed List of 'Competencies' for an Entry-Level Business Lawyer

This list is an initial list prepared by the task force noted above, most recently reviewed by the Legal Education Committee of the ABA Business Law Section at the Spring Meeting of the Section in April 2015. It will continue to be discussed, reviewed and revised, with an aim to providing more detailed materials for teaching or study by new lawyers, would-be lawyers, and trainers and employers of new lawyers. These would include, for example, specific scenarios and skillsets and checklists (such as “due diligence” or “closing documents”).This is by no means an all-inclusive list, and does not focus on specific areas, such as business formation, real estate, borrowing and lending, securities, intellectual property, but rather, more generic business lawyering skills. The Task Force recognizes that many larger law firms have their own competencies and training programs, so the focus of this outline is smaller firms, although these competencies may be applicable to mid-size and larger firms, as well.

Can Robots Be Lawyers? Computers, Lawyers, and the Practice of Law

We assess frequently-advanced arguments that automation will soon replace much of the work currently performed by lawyers. Our assessment addresses three core weaknesses in the existing literature: (i) a failure to engage with technical details to appreciate the capacities and limits of existing and emerging software; (ii) an absence of data on how lawyers divide their time among various tasks, only some of which can be automated; and (iii) inadequate consideration of whether algorithmic performance of a task conforms to the values, ideals and challenges of the legal profession. Combining a detailed technical analysis with a unique data set on time allocation in large law firms, we estimate that automation has an impact on the demand for lawyers’ time that while measureable, is far less significant than popular accounts suggest. We then argue that the existing literature’s narrow focus on employment effects should be broadened to include the many ways in which computers are changing (as opposed to replacing) the work of lawyers. We show that the relevant evaluative and normative inquiries must begin with the ways in which computers perform various lawyering tasks differently than humans. These differences inform the desirability of automating various aspects of legal practice, while also shedding light on the core values of legal professionalism.

Transforming Legal Capacity in Brazil: International Trade Law and the Myth of a Booming Practice

We claim that the initial capacity building efforts actually created an oversupply of trade law experts in Brazil. With the decline of WTO litigation work, these lawyers needed to find other areas to use their professional skills. The survival of these highly-specialized lawyers has required boldness and a shrewd approach to remodeling their own legal capacity to meet market demands. In sum, this practice has gravitated to trade remedies (defesa comercial), in particular, anti-dumping disputes that have been brought under Brazilian law. Demands made by Brazilian and foreign clients interested in applying anti-dumping measures, along with the creativeness of the professionals in this area burgeoned new organizational models for legal practice in international trade law in Brazil. As we show in this paper, Brazilian lawyers in this field have increasingly participated in global consulting networks, created “foreign desks” in large law firms, worked at firms specialized in government relations, and lobbied government agencies.

Law Firms in Argentina: Challenges and Responses to Crisis

The Argentine legal profession has experienced, as in most Latin American countries, a rapid process of change since the return of democracy. The expansion of higher education associated with democratization has contributed to an increase in the number of lawyers and has diversified the social composition of this professional group in terms of gender, class, and geographic origin. This chapter presents an overview of these changes, focusing especially on the situation of an important segment of the profession: large law firms, oriented toward the corporate sector. The first part of this chapter outlines the political and economic changes the country has experienced since 1990. The presentation of trends in the legal profession starts by analyzing the expansion of large firms in the nineties and continues by describing large law firms’ responses to the 2001 crisis. It concludes by showing their efforts to adapt to a context of recurrent economic crises and marked changes in foreign relations.

Firm/Employee Matching

The authors study the sources of match-specific value at large U.S. law firms by analyzing how graduates of law schools group into law firms. They measure the degree to which lawyers from certain schools concentrate within certain firms and then analyze how this agglomeration can be explained by “natural advantage’’ factors (such as geographic proximity) and by productive complementarities across graduates of a given school. Large law firms tend to hire from a select group of law schools, and individual offices within these firms are substantially more concentrated in terms of hires from particular schools. The degree of concentration is highly variable, as there is substantial variation in firms’ hiring strategies. Two main drivers of variation in law school concentration occur within law offices. First, geography drives a large amount of concentration, as most firms hire largely from local schools. Second, school-based networks (and possibly productive complementarities) appear to be important because partners’ law schools drive associates’ law school composition even when controlling for firm, school, and firm/school match characteristics and when instrumenting for partners’ law schools.

Creating a global law graduate: The need, benefits and practical approaches to internationalise the curriculum

<p class="JLDAbstract">The increasingly integrated world has facilitated important international and trans-border trends, such as a progressively connected global economy, a significant growth in transnational business transactions and an increase in global regulation of global issues. Such globalisation has had a transformational impact on the legal profession in a number of ways. These include the need to provide advice on issues or transactions that have a transnational or international element; the increasing globalisation of large law firms; and the delivery of offshore services by legal service providers. This means that not only do law graduates need to be prepared to practice in an increasingly globalised economy and legal profession, there will also be new career opportunities available to them which require understanding of international law, for example in emerging international institutions and non-government organisations. Accordingly there is a need to ensure that law students develop the knowledge and skills they will require to succeed in a globalised legal profession. That is, there is a need to internationalise the law curriculum. This paper provides an insight into the recent progression of law schools in internationalising the law curriculum and provides practical avenues and strategies for the increased integration of international law, foreign law and a comparative perspective into core subjects which will develop the graduates’ knowledge and skills in international and foreign law, in order to enhance their ability to succeed as legal professionals in a globalised world.</p>

Ongoing Innovation in Legal Education

The impact on the global economy of the financial services meltdown in 2008 and the resulting “Great Recession” can only be described as far reaching. All industries, including the legal services industry, were affected, with the pressures for cost containment causing profound disruption and changes in virtually every segment of the legal services market.In the wake of the Great Recession, corporate legal departments saw intensified pressure not only to do more with less, but also to experiment with new approaches for acquiring and delivering legal services. This dynamic, in turn, affected large law firms dramatically, with clients now sending less work to them and placing greater constraints on how that work gets done and billed for. In turn, law firms have undergone significant consolidation and have tightened their hiring practices dramatically.Law schools, who train the lawyers of the future, likewise felt the impact. With reduced law firm hiring, law school graduates saw reduced demand for their services, all while tuitions and debt levels continued to rise. Law school applications, not surprisingly, plummeted.In the face of (and because of) these changes, certain segments of the legal services industry continue to grow. Alternative legal service providers, such as eDiscovery vendors and Legal Process Outsourcers (“LPOs”), have prospered during this period, as have Legal Operations groups within corporate legal departments.

Rating Law Schools with a Student-Focused Output-Based System

A better rating system for law schools is needed for prospective law students. This Article uses novel data and methods to describe a possible alternative to the leading attempts to quantitatively measure law school quality. New data is drawn from a representative sample of attorneys presently employed at 100 large law firms, estimated relative starting salaries based upon the distribution of job categories among recent graduates, law school graduates in numerous powerful government positions, estimates of active graduates in the legal job market, and improved data about clerkship placement. These new data sources are combined with existing American Bar Association (ABA) and National Association for Law Placement (NALP) statistics as well as student debt data to create a ratings system that is wholly based on law school outputs. The system also employs statistical cluster analysis to differentiate law schools into appropriate categories rather than relying exclusively on misleading ordinal ranking systems.

Symbolism over substance? Large law firms and corporate social responsibility

ABSTRACTAt its core, corporate social responsibility (CSR) concerns the impacts of businesses on their surroundings. Despite their significant economic and geographic presence (and, as a corollary, their potential significant impacts), and despite the varied disciplinary and conceptual lenses used to study CSR, there is very little existing work looking at law firms and their own CSR policies. This paper fills part of that gap. In August 2014, we reviewed the websites of the top 100 English law firms, as ranked by the trade publication The Lawyer. We were interested in public disclosures made by those law firms on CSR. These were widespread. The majority of the top 100 firms say something to the wider world about CSR. However, what is said varies significantly. This is, perhaps, unsurprising. What is more surprising is that so few firms explain why they are committed to CSR. Where firms do make disclosures on CSR, these tend to group around the following three areas: (i) pro bono and community giving; (ii) diversity and inclusion; and (iii) environmental matters. For a number of firms, little or no distinction is made between pro bono (i.e. the giving of free legal advice) and wider ‘community giving’. We question whether this is the right approach. We were also concerned that, despite there being regulatory intervention by the Legal Services Board as regards the collection and reporting of diversity data by law firms (and other lawyers), the quality of disclosures (in terms of the amount, nature and breadth of data reported on) varied to such an extent that we were unable to draw any meaningful comparisons or conclusions on diversity in English law firms.

Ethnic and Racial Employment Discrimination in Low-Wage and High-Wage Markets: Randomized Controlled Trials Using Correspondence Tests in Israel

Abstract A rich body of literature on employment discrimination exists. Theoretically, discriminatory practices are explained by taste-based discrimination, differences in the bargaining ability of applicants or statistical discrimination. Global experimental research tends to show significant anti-minority attitudes in the hiring process, specifically at the entry stage into the engagement cycle – when an application and resume are sent to the prospective employer. These field studies often employ “correspondence tests,” in which identical, fictitious resumes are sent to employers with differences only in the racial, gender, religious or national origin of the applicant (e.g., the name of the applicant). Yet, the literature is lacking in at least three areas: First, evidence from correspondence tests has primarily focused on middle-range wage earners, and little research exists on low-wage or high-wage earner positions. Second, research has looked at employment discrimination that excludes certain groups, but has neglected possible prejudice that “locks” such groups into unqualified or underpaid positions. Finally, there may also be a place-based effect – in which diverse communities are less discriminatory than more homogeneous communities, or vice versa. In this paper, we report on two population-level experiments with seven independent correspondence tests that were conducted in the Israel labor market, both designed to fill these three lags in the literature. We tested the likelihood of (a) Israeli-Arab lawyers versus Jewish lawyers being asked to job interviews at Israel’s largest law firms (n = 178); and (b) Mizrahi Jews versus Ashkenazi Jews being asked to job interviews, in any one of the registered security firms (n = 369). We compared which groups are more likely to be called for interviews and then meta-analyzed the results using standardized differences of means. Our findings suggest significant overall employment discrimination against both Arab-Israelis and Mizrahi Jews, whose applications are overall less likely to be both acknowledged by the prospective employers and asked for interview – despite the applicants having identical qualifications. However, we find that the effect in low-wage jobs is conditional on geographic location, with evidence to suggest that in some regions there is no preference toward either ethnicity. We find no support for a locking effect. We discuss the findings in the broader theoretical context, but suggest that a more granular application of the theory is called for, which takes into account community dynamics and the level of localized ethnic integration.

A Nova Advocacia Pós-profissional e a Modernização das Grandes Sociedades de Advocacia Empresarial Brasileiras

As mudanças socioeconômicas que ensejaram formas de organização do trabalho mais flexíveis também atingiram os sistemas profissionais, inaugurando a fase do pós-profissionalismo, representada pela adoção de uma lógica orientada para o mercado. O objetivo deste trabalho é compreender e analisar essas transformações na advocacia brasileira a partir de uma pesquisa qualitativa. Foram entrevistados 22 profissionais ligados a seis dos mais importantes escritórios de advocacia do país. Para a análise dos dados, utilizou-se a técnica de análise de conteúdo temática. Os resultados indicam que os escritórios estão passando por um processo de incorporação de práticas gerenciais típicas de empresas capitalistas que competem no mercado: hierarquia flexível, equipes multidisciplinares e células de trabalho especializadas. Além disso, os profissionais da área estão adotando uma lógica empresarial. Concluiu-se que os grandes escritórios de advocacia estão começando a vivenciar, mais fortemente, uma ruptura com os valores tradicionais da profissão, embora antigas práticas ainda façam parte do cotidiano dessas organizações.

Accountability and the Regulation of the Large Law Firm Lawyer

The regulation of solicitors inEngland andWales has undergone great change in the wake of the Legal Services Act 2007. This article considers these regulatory developments through the lens of accountability, focussing on the regulation of transactional lawyers and the large commercial firms. It examines to what extent the Solicitors Regulation Authority's regulatory framework promotes accountability, examining entity regulation, outcomes‐focussed and principles‐based regulation, reporting and disclosure obligations, the Compliance Officer for Legal Practice and the sanctions system. It argues that although transactional lawyers cannot claim the benefit of the ethical principle of non‐accountability, as far as they and their firms are concerned, the regulatory framework is both unnecessary and insufficient. It duplicates the function of accountability to the client and fails to hold transactional lawyers to account for significant regulatory risks that they present, such as the practice of creative compliance.

Educational Affiliations and Intra-Organizational Allocations of Labor

Labor markets research documents how educational credentials shape inter-organizational allocations of labor through the matching of individuals to employers. We argue that educational credentials also shape intra-organizational allocations by affecting the placement of employees into formal work structure. This core proposition is supported by analyses of data from the U.S. legal services industry. First, an industry-level analysis of large law firms reveals that two lawyers who graduated from the same law school are more likely to be allocated to the same work group than two lawyers who graduated from different law schools. Second, an analysis of a single, international law firm reveals that two lawyers who graduated from the same law school are more likely to be allocated to the same hierarchical work relationship than two lawyers who graduated from different law schools. Implications of our findings for literature on networks, labor markets, and social stratification are discussed.

Knowledge management in law firms in Botswana: Some lessons for small law firms

This article investigates the challenges to knowledge management in small law firms in Botswana and suggests some lessons for enhancing knowledge management. The growing literature on knowledge management has focused largely on insights into its use in large law firms. There is very little writing on techniques of enhancing knowledge management in small law firms. Although large firms may be seen as logical users of sophisticated knowledge management systems, there is an increasing need for small firms to capture and intelligently exploit their knowledge.This is because in the knowledge economy, these firms continue to play a major role in generating gross income and in enhancing economic development. However, not much attention has been given to knowledge management in small firms. This research uses open- and closed-ended questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and a literature review to contribute to the body of knowledge on knowledge management in small firms and promote an awareness of its use amongst small law firms. It also suggests techniques for enhancing knowledge management in small law firms. There is a paucity of research in the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches in understanding knowledge management in small firms.

Digitalization and Promotion: An Empirical Study in a Large Law Firm

In law firms, the number of hours that associates work reportedly plays a preponderant role in promotion decisions. We build on previous research in this area by distinguishing the effect of ‘development hours’ from ‘billable hours’ on promotions and by assessing the extent to which billable hours are still important criteria today, in digitalized environments where efficiency is, presumably, likely to matter more than working long hours. We also examine whether certain types of behaviours, like associates' interactions with technology, may be associated directly or indirectly with a higher likelihood of promotion. We studied these questions in the context of a large corporate law firm in continentalEurope, focusing on the promotion of 93 lawyers between 2005 and 2010. We found that both billable and development hours are still significant positive predictors of promotions and that associates' ability to use the case firm's computer‐mediated knowledge management system productively is indirectly rewarded by promotion. This research reasserts the fundamental role of billable hours as one of the primary means for evaluating lawyers' work and suggests that using knowledge management systems gives associates an edge in the race for promotion, particularly in law firms moving along the ‘evolutionary path’ of legal service, from bespoke to commoditized work (Susskind, R. (2010).The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services. Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Bad Tax Shelters -- Accountability or the Lack Thereof: Ten Years of Tax Malpractice

In the 1990’s and early 2000’s the tax landscape in the United States was overrun by an epidemic of tax shelters that was unprecedented. The shelters were designed and sold by seemingly reputable large accounting and law firms. The same shelters were sold to many taxpayers. They became generic, off-the-shelf, products. However, the tax shelters had no business substance. The shelters were eventually found to be invalid by the courts. In light of the invalidity of the shelters, the large fees paid for the shelters and the large damages caused by participating in the invalid shelters, there were predictions that many malpractice suits against the sellers of the shelters would ensue.For this article I attempted to determine whether the predicted wave of tax malpractice suits occurred and what impact, if any, resulted in the area of tax malpractice litigation.Much to my surprise, there ended up being very few cases focusing on substance. There were several class actions that were settled but, in light of the settlements, offered no useful insights. Most of the other reported cases dealt with procedural issues such as whether the action must be arbitrated, federal versus state venue, statute of limitations, etc. In the end, there were only a few cases that addressed any issue of substance. The only exception was a huge case in Kentucky, Yung v. Grant Thornton LLP , that was decided in late November, 2013. The case was huge because of its length (over 200 pages) and because it awarded $20 million in compensatory damages and $80 million in punitive damages. In the article I analyze the few existing generic tax shelter cases and try to fit them into the general principles governing tax malpractice. I then also review the other developments in the tax malpractice area during approximately the last decade.

What Ails the Large Law Firm? Will the Real FutureFirm Please Stand Up

“What Ails the Large Law Firm?” was written in the early summer of 2009, shortly after the completion of FutureFirm 1.0 — a “collaborative competition” in which teams of law firm partners, in-house lawyers, and junior associates competed with one another to create a law firm that would survive and thrive over the next 20 years. This essay reported the surprising results of the competition along with my own commentary on how these results could be used by BigLaw to adapt to changing times.Upon completing the essay, however, I filed it away. Back in 2009, law firm leaders had too many emergencies on their hands to listen to the unsolicited advice of a legal academic. Although I thought my analysis had merit, the timing was wrong. A better course of action was to let events play out.Nearly five years have past since FutureFirm 1.0. To our great relief, the fall-out from the 2008 credit crisis is behind us. To the surprise of some, the large law firm sector has come out the other side substantially intact. Headcounts are slightly up from 2008, and the most firms remain quite profitable. Yet, most law firm managers would probably agree with Bruce MacEwen’s sober conclusion that Growth is Dead.I am circulating “What Ails the Large Law Firm? Will the Real FutureFirm Please Stand Up” because I think most large law firm lawyers would be interested in revisiting the crisis of 2008-2009. Since that time, many short- and medium-term strategies have been tried, and many were successful. But they were also short- or medium-term. Lawyers at many firms are ready to have a conversation about longer-term ideas. Politicians may long for a crisis to make change. Prolonged ruts, in contrast, appear to bring out the best in big firm lawyers.With this brief prologue in place, it is my hope that “What Ails the Large Law Firm?” may be a useful and well-timed message.

Precarious Professionalism -- Some Empirical and Behavioural Perspectives on Lawyers

This paper adapts the normative claims of professions and Abbott's ecological theory of professions to argue that legal professionalism is precarious in four particular ways. Evidence from socio-legal and behavioural studies questions claims to: 1. superior competence; 2. superior ethicality; 3. superior leadership (state-of-the-art-ness); and, 4. superior regulatory practice.The paper argues that greater reflexive engagement in the problems of professionalism and institutional development of ethicality is required. The evidence on competence does not suggest that where legal professions compete with non-lawyers their competence is superior . Similarly, evidence on ethicality suggests not only that lawyers may not be superior to 'mere business' but that elements of the professions 'client first' 'business focused' model are likely to be detrimental to ethicality. Both behavioural research and case studies of recent ethical problems manifest in large London-based law firms support the view that these detriments have manifested themselves. New providers of legal services are beginning to challenge the claims of elite firms to provide state of the art legal services. Finally, the value of regulatory techniques as employed by professions and latterly professional regulators, in the context of the Legal Services Act, have not demonstrated their value.

Corporate lawyers and their clients: walking the line between law and business

This paper examines the complex and subtle world of lawyer–client relationships. Taking corporate lawyers as our case study, we provide an examination of the strategies and tactics that lawyers use in dealing with their clients. Rather than adopting the binary distinction between professionalism and commercialism on which much past research has been based, we here take a more pragmatic approach. Informed by recent work on relational regulation by Silbey, we embrace a broader framework that incorporates lawyers' relations, organizational contexts and professional proscriptions. Based on analyses of interviews with 106 corporate lawyers working in large law firms, we demonstrate that there is a heterogeneous set of practices that characterizes corporate lawyers' relationships with clients. We observe four ideal types that run along two axes: the extent to which lawyers reference law versus experience to explain their behavior or decisions; and the extent to which lawyers frame their role in terms of individual action or as part of a collectivity. We argue that identifying ideal types allows us to open up the scope of understanding the ways in which lawyers interact with their clients.

Retaining Color

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite, large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have so much difficulty retaining attorneys of color — in particular black and Hispanic attorneys. And yet, there may be a relatively simple and low-cost set of incentives that law firm management and the legal profession can put in place to encourage black and Hispanic attorneys to remain at large law firms at higher rates. This Article draws on traditional theories of “the firm” and modern day understandings of workplace discrimination and applies them to the retention problem in large law firms. It argues that by incentivizing equity partners in large firms, who are overwhelmingly white males, to instill greater loyalty in black and Hispanic attorneys, firms can solve a large portion of their retention problem. As equity partners invest more time mentoring black and Hispanic attorneys, they will develop a sense of loyalty to the firm that will decrease the speed and frequency that attorneys of color exit the firm. Firms can then begin Retaining Color.