Law Firm Partners Research Articles

‘Gorilla exceptions’ and the ethically apathetic corporate lawyer

ABSTRACTThis paper draws on interviews with 57 corporate finance lawyers working from global law firms based in the City of London. Drawing on this data, we highlight common themes of taking deals at ‘face value’, being the lawyer-technician who uses the law to effect his client’s wishes, and not ‘pushing’ ethics. We suggest that there is an apathy – a lack of concern or interest – about ethics on the part of corporate lawyers. This apathy stems from various sources. It is linked to assumptions about the sorts of clients that large law firms are willing or not willing to act for, and assumptions about the ‘right sort of people’ the firm hires and retains; it is linked to strong notions of role morality; and it is founded on the classic legal ethics ‘standard conception’ principles of neutrality and non-accountability. Our data also highlights a lack of ethical infrastructures in large firms, and a lack of ethical leadership from law firm partners for the associates and trainees working for them.

Developments in Professional Responsibility

This Survey Article examines developments in the Indiana law of professional responsibility from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2013. A few cases captured attention during the survey period with bizarre fact patterns. Readers may remember (1) the lawyer who wrote a tell-all book about a former client; (2) the lawyer who distributed flyers about “bloodsucking shylocks”; or (3) the law firm partner who sent a fake e-mail to humiliate an associate that spurned his romantic advances. These cases—and several less scandalous examples—remind all lawyers of their ethical obligations to clients, courts, and other lawyers. This Article also discusses trends in attorney discipline that may be linked to newly appointed Indiana Supreme Court Justices and Disciplinary Commission staff.

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.

What Makes Lawyers Happy? Transcending the Anecdotes with Data from 6200 Lawyers

This is the first theory-guided empirical research seeking to identify the correlates and contributors to the well-being and life satisfaction of lawyers. Data from several thousand lawyers in four states provide insights about diverse factors from law school and one's legal career and personal life. Striking patterns appear repeatedly in the data and raise serious questions about the common priorities on law school campuses and among lawyers. External factors, which are often given the most attention and concern among law students and lawyers (factors oriented towards money and status — such as earnings, partnership in a law firm, law school debt, class rank, law review membership, and U.S. News & World Report's law school rankings), showed nil to small associations with lawyer well-being. Conversely, the kinds of internal and psychological factors shown in previous research to erode in law school appear in these data to be the most important contributors to lawyers’ happiness and satisfaction. These factors constitute the first two of five tiers of well-being factors identified in the data, followed by choices regarding family and personal life. The external money and status factors constitute the fourth tier, and demographic differences were least important.Data on lawyers in different practice types and settings demonstrate the applied importance of the contrasting internal and external factors. Attorneys in large firms and other prestigious positions were not as happy as public service attorneys, despite the far better grades and pay of the former group; and junior partners in law firms were no happier than senior associates, despite the greatly enhanced pay and status of the partners. Overall, the data also demonstrate that lawyers are very much like other people, notwithstanding their specialized cognitive training and the common perception that lawyers are different from others in fundamental ways.Additional measures raised concerns. Subjects did not broadly agree that the behavior of judges and lawyers is professional, or that the legal process reaches fair outcomes; and subjects reported quite unrealistic earnings expectations for their careers when they entered law school. Implications for improving lawyer performance and professionalism, and recommendations for law teachers and legal employers, are drawn from the data.

Progressive lawyers under siege: Moral panic during the McCarthy era

Our goal is to analyze the culture within the San Francisco law firm of Gladstein, Andersen and Leonard (circa 1945–1965). For this we utilize archival documents, FBI files, oral histories, and personal interviews. The law firm represented alleged subversives, including Harry Bridges the longtime president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Thus, the law firm partners were stigmatized by the clients they represented and they all had lengthy FBI files. The partners all had working class backgrounds, one was an immigrant and two were Jewish. Clearly, religion and ethnicity were not litmus tests for participation in the firm, nor was educational pedigree. Gladstein and Leonard graduated from elite law schools while Andersen did his legal training at a night school. During the dark days of the Cold War various partners were threatened, shot and jailed for merely engaging in their legal practice. Ironically, as the FBI blacklisted alleged subversives, these attorneys had more clients to defend.

Not Worth the Sacrifice? Women's Aspirations and Career Progression in Law Firms

Although there has been a dramatic rise in the numbers of women entering the legal profession, women are far less likely than men to work as law firm partners. While there is evidence to suggest that women experience barriers to career progression,Hakim (2006) contends that not all women wish to advance to higher levels in their organizations and those who do may choose to remain childless and therefore not be interested in work–family/life policies. Against the backdrop of this debate, this article examines women's career aspirations and perceptions of their opportunities for promotion among a large sample of lawyers (N = 384). It was found that women with strong aspirations for advancement to partnership did not necessarily eschew the need for a balanced life‐style. All female lawyers, however, including those with strong aspirations for partnership, perceived that their opportunities for promotion were relatively constrained. It was the nature of a law firm's work–family/life culture, as well as the availability of flexible working, that exerted the most important influences on female lawyers' perceptions of their ability to progress in their careers.

Effect of Lateral Partners on Law Firm Performance

We examine how employee mobility influences firms’ performance by focusing on lateral partners in law firms. We also examined how the effect of lateral partner hiring on law firm performance would ...

Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers

This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures that are widely used and comparable across firms: the number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated. We find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both measures. Male lawyers bill ten percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue than do female lawyers. We demonstrate that the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance. We also show that accounting for performance has important consequences for gender gaps in lawyers’ earnings and subsequent promotion. Whereas individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the earnings gap, the inclusion of performance measures explains a substantial share of the remainder. Performance measures also explain a sizeable share of the gender gap in promotion.

Gender Gaps in Performance: Evidence from Young Lawyers

This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures that are widely used and comparable across firms: the number of hours billed to clients and the amount of new client revenue generated. We find clear evidence of a gender gap in annual performance with respect to both measures. Male lawyers bill ten percent more hours and bring in more than twice the new client revenue than do female lawyers. We demonstrate that the differential impact across genders in the presence of young children and differences in aspirations to become a law firm partner account for a large share of the difference in performance. We also show that accounting for performance has important consequences for gender gaps in lawyers' earnings and subsequent promotion. Whereas individual and firm characteristics explain up to 50 percent of the earnings gap, the inclusion of performance measures explains a substantial share of the remainder. Performance measures also explain a sizeable share of the gender gap in promotion.

Overcoming Relational Inertia

This paper examines how organizational members overcome relational inertia and contribute to integration and value creation following an acquisition, through an analysis of a large law firm’s acquisition of two smaller firms. When merging law firm partners share clients with one another, both within and across the boundaries of the formerly separate firms, they create new relationships that connect the organizational units together. We examine both the antecedents and consequences of post-acquisition integration through client sharing. Drawing on network theory, we consider how the configuration of prior referral relationships influences new sharing of clients undertaken by individual partners. We also use the prior referral-network structure to predict which partners will cut their former intraunit client-sharing ties. To ascertain how client sharing creates value for the combined organization, we analyze the effects of client sharing on revenue generation and human capital development. Our findings uncover a paradox in integration behavior: the same referral-network structures that contribute to integration by increasing interunit sharing also tend to detract from integration because they are associated with cutting existing intraunit ties. We also find that interunit client sharing is positively associated with revenue generation but negatively associated with human capital development. Overall, this research advances a relational perspective on post-acquisition integration and sheds new light on how networks are formed and become reconfigured inside organizations.

Women, Private Practice and Billable Hours

Women have been entering law schools in record numbers over the past two decades. In fact, they currently outnumber men in many law schools in the United States and Canada. However, they face several barriers to full integration in law firms. As a result, many of them are leaving in droves. In this article, the authors examine one of the issues—the billable hours pay system—that prevents them from becoming partners in law firms. After critically examining the role and impact of the billable hours’ culture on women lawyers, and drawing on the total rewards strategy used in some organizations, the authors offer modest recommendations for changing the pay system.

Legal Discrimination? Alternatives to Traditional Linear Equity Partnerships and Flexible Employment for Female Attorneys at U.S. Law Firms

As the legal profession gradually reaches equality in numbers among male and female practitioners, the percentage of female law firm partners remains at relatively low levels. Equity partnership in a law firm remains the last bastion of male dominance, shutting the door on sharing the wealth within the profession. As stated by Reichman and Sterling, compensation disparity is clearly the foundation of gender disparity. However, the increase in female attorneys during the post-feminist era has also brought about a critical mass of women who do not want to participate in the years of long hours and high billable hours that many firms require on the partnership track. In an attempt to keep institutional knowledge, many law firms have designed retention programs for young female lawyers that include part-time work that allows time for raising small children, and non-equity partnership tracks that do not require the arduous hours required for an equity partnership. But does this solve the problem of low levels of female partnerships? This article looks at historical basis and current trends of law firm partnerships, the use of two-tier partnership structures, and gives suggestions on how to increase levels of female partnerships.

Experiencing Discrimination: Race and Retention in America's Largest Law Firms

Although the number of racial and ethnic minority lawyers in the legal profession has greatly increased, concern remains about their low percentage among partners in elite law firms. Using a nationally representative sample of young American lawyers, we compare a human capital–based theory, which emphasizes measures of merit, and an institutional discrimination–based theory, which focuses on differences in partner contact and mentoring. The results indicate that institutional discrimination theory is the better way of understanding racial and ethnic differences in lawyer retention. Future affirmative action programs need to focus not just on access but also the processes within large firms if minority presence is to be increased.

The Partnership Paradigm and Law Firm Nonequity Partners

Law firms have traditionally been organized as partnerships. The law generally treats the relationship among or between partners as one of equals. Unfortunately, equality - for all its virtues - has a downside in professional partnerships. Some partners are simply more productive than others, regardless of how productivity is measured. In some firms, productive partners effectively subsidize their unproductive or under-productive peers. Equality poses other potential problems, as well. For example, some associates who become eligible for partnership based on years of service at a firm may not be prepared to assume the mantle of partnership and the professional obligations and responsibilities that come along, or their particular practices may not justify promotion to partnership. The perceived deficiencies or inefficiencies of traditional partnerships have not been lost on law firm leaders and those who advise them, and the 1970s accordingly saw the advent of two-tiered partnerships. Two-tier partnerships are characterized by a top tier of partners who hold equity in the firm and a lower tier of partners who do not. Most large law firms are now either two-tier or multi-tier partnerships. The widespread acceptance of non-equity partnerships does not, however, connote agreement among lawyers or courts on what it means to be a non-equity partner, or even whether non-equity partners are in fact partners. This article analyzes whether non-equity partners truly are partners in their firms as a matter of partnership law. It also explores the descending path to non-equity partnership, i.e., de-equitization. Consistent with the law of partnership expulsions, it explains that firms may de-equitize partners without incurring related liability so long as they do not do so for predatory purposes. Finally, it examines employment law constraints on law firms’ treatment of non-equity partners. It concludes that contrary to the views held by many lawyers and scholars, whether law firm partners are protected under anti-discrimination laws depends not on whether they are equity partners or non-equity partners, but on their workplace control.

Crafting a Career as a Chicana Lawyer, Prof, Judge

Crafting a Career as a Chicana Lawyer, Prof, Judge

The Myth of Meritocracy: Evaluating the Role of Box Credentials in Colorado Law Firm Hiring Practices

The Cravath Model - also known as merit-based hiring - has been the centerpiece of large law firm's hiring processes for nearly 100 years. New associates and prospective partners are expected to hold any number of - things like top class standing, graduating from a top school, membership on a law journal - to be considered for employment or partnership. In this meritocracy, the best and brightest are supposed to advance to the top levels, irrespective of subjective criteria. The Cravath Model appears sound on its face, but, in recent years, it has faced scrutiny by critics citing its high costs, unsustainability, and negative impacts on diversity and inclusiveness efforts.This article provides a summary of the problems with the Cravath Model and draws on the findings of a study completed by the Minority Corporate Counsel of America. That study found that partners and shareholders in the largest national firms did not possess the box credentials they demanded in their new associates and prospective partners. An evaluation of over 1,400 Colorado attorneys revealed that the same trend is occurring in Colorado. Subsequent interviews with hiring partners in Colorado's largest law firms revealed that, despite evidence to the contrary, hiring partners believe that their peers possess these box credentials and that some box credentials - particularly academic performance - are indicative of sustained success. The data suggests that hiring reforms are in order, and presents several first steps for law firms to take to begin to unravel the myth of meritocracy.

The professionalism of practising law: A comparison across work contexts

AbstractTraditionally, the literature assumed that solo practitice best exemplifies the ideal professional work arrangement and that when professionals become salaried employees their professionalism is seriously threatened. The primary goal of this paper is to examine lawyers' sense of professionalism across two work contexts: solo practitioner offices and law firm settings. We also examine status distinctions within law firms, between associates and partners, and compare both to independent practitioners. Solo practitioners and law firm partners are similar on most key dimensions of professionalism, whereas the greatest contrasts occur between partners and associates within law firms. Partners and solo practitioners share similar experiences of autonomy and service as owner‐managers, whereas partners and associates share greater collegiality among professionals, perhaps fostered through law firm cultures. All three groups report comparable amounts of variety in their work and are equally committed to the practice of law. The key factors that account for gaps in professionalism reflect the nature of law practices, primarily through time spent with corporate clients and pressure to generate profits. We conclude that different versions of lawyers' professionalism are influenced by the everyday aspects of their work and one version is not necessarily more professional than the other. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Negotiating cultures of work in transnational law firms

The geographical strategies of transnational corporations have received extensive attention from economic geographers. A particularly important line of study has focused upon the diverse national institutions that create geographically heterogeneous cultures of work. Yet none of these studies place questions about how global firms act as ‘cultural entrepreneurs’ at the centre of their analysis. This paper, therefore, uses the case of transnational law firms to extend theoretical debates about the geographies of learning and best practice through new micro-scale consideration of the way managers in TNCs act as cultural entrepreneurs, driving change in institutionalised cultures of work through strategies that alter the cognitive frames of workers. Drawing primarily on data from interviews, the paper reveals how the strategies used by influential partners in transnational law firms to drive changes in cultures of work do not lead to forms of global strong convergence in practice but converging divergences as cultures change in subtle, often unpredicted ways. It is argued that economic geographers need to pay more attention to the mechanisms of such changes in culture, and the processes of change in national business systems more widely, so as to contribute to debates about corporate culture but also the varieties of capitalism.

Lawyering, Psychiatric Treatment, and Schizophrenia: A Healing Interaction

Lawyering, Psychiatric Treatment, and Schizophrenia: A Healing Interaction

The Rat Race as an Information Forcing Device

In many job settings, there will be some promotion criteria that are less amenable to measurement than others. Often, what is difficult to measure is more important. For example, possessing under pressure may be a better predictor of success as a law firm partner than the ability to bill a vast amount of hours. The first puzzle that this essay explores is why, in some promotion settings, organizations appear to focus on less important, but measurable, criteria such as hours billed. The answer lies in the relationship between the objectively measurable criteria, on the one hand, and the subjective and less visible (but more important) attributes on the other hand. Under certain circumstances, a competition over the measurable criteria, such as hours billed or number of deals accomplished, can force the revelation of information on hard-to-measure subjective attributes of the candidate such as judgment or collegiality. For example, it is easier to evaluate the judgment of an associate who has amassed a number of deals than one who has not. Some information about the associate's good and bad judgment is likely to be generated from the deals. So, while it makes little sense to promote associates based solely on billable hours, making billable hours the goal of the first round of a tournament, where the winners are awarded eligibility for consideration for partnership, can generate information more relevant to the second round partner selection decision. Explaining the first puzzle leads to a second puzzle. If promotion tournaments over measurable criteria can be effectively utilized in the private sector to force information about candidate traits, why do we not see revelation tournaments elsewhere, where competition may generate information useful in evaluating candidates for promotion? The answer, we suggest, has to do at least in part with agency problems. Promotion tournaments based on measurable criteria limit the discretion of agents making the promotion decisions. When decision-makers have less discretion, the return to currying favor with those decision-makers falls. As a result, decision-makers with less discretion earn less rent. Decision-makers acting as agents also enjoy a reduced ability to make promotion decisions according to their own preferences separate from the goals of their principals.