Top Ten Changes in the Legal Profession Since 1979, Part II

Scale_of_justiceThe first half of the Top Ten list was posted yesterday here.

6. The changing structure of law firms, including specialization.

Only a few law firms were “national” or “international” in any sense of the word in 1979. The most well known was Baker & McKenzie, the Chicago behemoth. If I recall correctly, Foley & Lardner had no office outside of Wisconsin (and maybe Milwaukee) in 1979. In 1985, ten Dallas law firms had 100 or more lawyers, but none was as large as the three largest Houston law firms. One of those Dallas firms was the Cleveland law firm of Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue (now Jones Day), which came to Dallas in 1981, and which housed 122 lawyers by 1985. Jones Day’s “principal” office is now considered Washington, D.C., according to the National Law Journal, and it has 2,492 attorneys. Large law firms must be national in order to compete effectively for large corporate business (there may be a few New York-based exceptions to this rule, but just a few). Baker & McKenzie remains the largest law firm in the National Law Journal’s NLJ 250 with 3,949 lawyers in 2009, but five firms are larger than 2,000 lawyers, even after a bloodletting in which over 5,200 lawyers at the 250 largest firms were let go beginning in late 2008. The smallest of these 250 firms has 164 lawyers, a number that creates substantial fixed costs.

Firms this large are no longer partnerships in theory or fact. 

Continue ReadingTop Ten Changes in the Legal Profession Since 1979, Part II

Top Ten Changes in the Legal Profession Since 1979, Part I

Scale_of_justiceI was asked by Michael O’Hear to serve as the January guest blogger (blawger?), and thank him for this opportunity. I teach courses in Constitutional Law, Evidence, Professional Responsibility, and American Legal History at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas, where I began teaching in the Fall of 1987.  My website is at www.michaelariens.com. I started at Marquette Law School in the Fall of 1979.  Since I have little idea what might interest any audience, I decided to use the crutch of an-end-of-the-year (or in this case, beginning-of-the-year) Top Ten list. I’ve listed what I perceive as the ten most important changes in the American legal profession since I entered law school.

1. Increasing competition for business by firms engaged in the private practice of law.

No other change comes close to the impact created by the increased in competition for clients. Several of the other changes listed below are a direct or indirect result of the quest for business. Intensifying competition has altered the promotion-to-partner tournament played by associates; including a substantial lengthening of the years required to reach partnership; changed the calculation of both associate and partner pay (including the dreaded “eat what you kill” compensation method); led to changes in the organizational structure of law firms; increased the shady business of case runners in the personal injury field; and affected the rules of ethics, the mentoring system of recent law school graduates, and law school applications.

One reason why some newly-minted lawyers are paid $160,000 to work at a large law firm is because those lawyers will eventually earn the partners significant profits. It is also because those lawyers are unlikely to make partner at the firm where they start. 

Continue ReadingTop Ten Changes in the Legal Profession Since 1979, Part I

Creative Destruction Is Both

I’ve mentioned a few times that I appreciate the writing of Jim Manzi on the question of climate change. He does a good job of cutting through to the fog to find what seems to me to be the most reasonable position on AGW.

So it doesn’t surprise me that Manzi has an interesting piece in the fantastic new journal National Affairs on the tension between policies promoting growth and those promoting social cohesion. You should read it all but one of the propositions is that, while liberals assume the material wealth that they seek to distribute without an adequate regard for the way in which redistributive policies will impede its production, conservatives assume the cohesion – I would prefer the word “social capital” – that the operation of markets and individualism promoted by capitalism can tend to undercut.

The conservative ascendancy was, in large part, as result of Democratic policies that either ignored the creation of wealth or believed that it was no longer possible. If conservatives are to avoid a liberal ascendancy, we need to think about cohesion and the importance that the benefits of growth – while they need not and probably cannot – be equally distributed, ought to be widely shared.

One of the things that brings to mind – and Manzi addresses it rather indirectly – is the extent to which the dichotomy between economic and social issues is a false one. One of the persistent causes of poverty is the deterioration of social capital in poor communities. There is a reason for many of the “judgmental” moral standards that have traditionally characterized American society.

The problem, it seems to me, is that we have lost our ability to discuss these things. The overriding memes of our generation – tolerance, equality and individualism – make it almost impossible to talk about anything but materialistic and reductionist responses to social problems.

Cross posted at Shark and Shepherd.

Continue ReadingCreative Destruction Is Both