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Cravath By The Sea: Recruitment In The Large Halifax Law Firm, 1900-1955, Jeffrey Haylock Oct 2008

Cravath By The Sea: Recruitment In The Large Halifax Law Firm, 1900-1955, Jeffrey Haylock

Dalhousie Law Journal

The traditional view is that regularized, meritocratic hiring in Canadian law firms had to wait until the 1960s, with the rise in importance of Ontario university law schools. There was, however, more regional variation than this view allows. After an overview of the rise of large firms in the U.S. and Canada, and of the modern hiring strategies (the "Cravath system") that developed in New York in the early twentieth century, the author considers whether Halifax firms were employing these strategies between 1900 and 1955. Nepotistic hiring continued unabated; however, the three large firms of the period recruited young students …


The Elastic Tournament: The Second Transformation Of The Big Law Firm, William D. Henderson, Marc Galanter Jan 2008

The Elastic Tournament: The Second Transformation Of The Big Law Firm, William D. Henderson, Marc Galanter

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In 1991, Galanter and Palay published 'Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm', which documented the regular and relentless growth of large U.S. law firms. The book advanced several structural and historical factors to explain these patterns, centering on the adoption of the promotion-to-partnership tournament. Systemic changes in the marketplace for corporate legal services in the intervening years suggest the need for an updated account of the modern large law firm. Using 'Tournament of Lawyers' as a starting point, we propose to fill this void in the literature. Marching through a wide array of empirical evidence covering …