Law Commons^™

Efficiency Engines: How Managed Services Are Building Systems For Corporate Legal Work, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Talent Systems For Law Firms, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

irtually every large US law firm owes its rise and success to a talent system it adopted several decades ago. These talent systems were effective because they created highly skilled business lawyers in a way that aligned the interests of partners, associates, and clients. The most prominent example is the Cravath System, though other business lawyers throughout the US were making similar discoveries at roughly the same time. The tremendous forward momentum of these first-generation talent systems has created the problem of ahistorical partners — owners who collect the late-stage benefits of a talent system approach without understanding its original …

Book Review. Glass Half Full: The Decline And Rebirth Of The Legal Profession By Benjamin H. Barton, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Changing Economic Geography Of Large U.S. Law Firms, William D. Henderson, Arthur S. Alderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The number of lawyers working for large U.S. law firms has increased dramatically. One important manifestation of this is the growing network of branch offices. Informed by three theories of spatial change—law firms (i) following the geographic expansion of their clients, relying on (ii) traditional agglomeration economies and relying on (iii) agglomeration benefits emerging from a location’s connectivity to other important geographies— we analyze longitudinal data on large U.S. law firms and the global urban network in which they are embedded. We find that, after the late 2000s, geographic expansion was less connected to organic market growth in U.S. domestic …

Human Capital Accounting, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Women In The Legal Profession, 1970-2010: A Study Of The Global Supply Of Lawyers, Ethan Michelson

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article represents the first effort to measure the changing global supply and composition of lawyers over a period of several decades. In it I assemble data on lawyer populations and gender compositions from eighty-six countries and use them to calculate estimates for the rest of the world in order to paint a truly global picture of the changing supply of lawyers in general and of female lawyers in particular. Most of the data supporting my analyses come from a unique and hitherto untapped source: individual-level census data. Results reveal a clear sequence in the global process of lawyer feminization. …

Who's Eating Law Firms' Lunch? The Legal Service Providers, Law Schools And New Grads At The Table, William D. Henderson, Rachel M. Zahorsky

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Three Generations Of U.S. Lawyers: Generalists, Specialists, Project Managers, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A simple framework for understanding the U.S. legal profession is a gradual progression through three generations of lawyers: the generalist, the specialist, and the project manager. The transition from one generation to the next is driven by the familiar story of supply and demand. The generalist era (colonial period to the end of World War II) gave way to the specialist era (post-War to early 2000s) because of a shortage of sophisticated business lawyers capable of serving the needs of large, growing, and increasingly regulated industrial and financial clients. Over a period of several decades, leading local practitioners with business …

Shadow Lawyering: Nonlawyer Practice Within Law Firms, Paul R. Tremblay

Indiana Law Journal

Lawyers commonly associate with nonlawyers to assist in their performance of lawyering tasks. A lawyer cannot know with confidence, though, whether the delegation of some tasks to a nonlawyer colleague might result in her assisting in the unauthorized practice of law, because the state of the law and the commentary about nonlawyer practice is so confused and incoherent. Some respected authority within the profession tells the lawyer that she may only delegate preparatory matters and must prohibit the nonlawyer from discussing legal matters with clients, or negotiating on behalf of clients. Other authority suggests that the lawyer may delegate a …

Between Diffusion And Distinctiveness In Globalization: U.S. Law Firms Go Glocal, Carole Silver, Nicole De Bruin Phelan, Mikaela Rabinowitz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

There is widespread agreement that law firms have embraced globalization, but what this means and why it matters are subjects still cloaked with uncertainty. Do law firms follow the models and processes of globalization characteristic of other businesses? Or are law firms forced to take a different approach because of the nature of law and its basis in a particular national system? In this article, we consider these questions as they apply to U.S. law firms, and offer a new lens to interpret the role of globalization in the activities of law firms and their lawyers. We use data relating …

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 …

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David T. Zaring

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In the Shadow of the Law. By Kermit Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2005. Pp. 346. $24.

Utterly Monkey: A Novel. By Nick Laird. London & New York: Harper Perennial. 2005. Pp. 344. $13.95.

Two recent novels portray the substantively unhappy and morally unfulfilling lives of young associates who work long hours in large, elite law firms. As it turns out, their search for love, happiness, and moral purpose is largely in vain. In the rarefied atmosphere of both fictitious firms, the best and the brightest while away their best years doing document reviews, drafting due diligence memoranda …

The Rat Race As An Information-Forcing Device, Scott Baker, Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati

Indiana Law Journal

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 "good judgment" 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 …

An Empirical Study Of Single-Tier Versus Two-Tier Partnerships In The Am Law 200, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

During the last decade, many of the nation's largest law firms have converted from single-tier to two-tier (or multi-tier) partnerships. A two-tier firm contains separate tracks for equity and nonequity partner. The equity tier typically controls the firm and enjoys a larger per capita share of the firm's profits. At present, two-tier partnerships make up 80 percent of Am Law 200. The conventional explanation for the growth of the two-tier system (or, conversely, the abandonment of the single-tier) is that it produces higher profits per equity partner (PPP), thus solidifying the prestige of the firm and improving its ability to …

Regulatory Mismatch In The International Market For Legal Services, Carole Silver

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The increasingly international reach of law owes part of its momentum to individual lawyers and law firms that function as carriers of ideas, processes and policies. U.S. lawyers are important participants in this expanding influence of law, as they educate, train and deploy individuals educated and licensed in the U.S. and abroad. This article examines the ways in which law firms internationalize, and considers the regulatory environment governing crucial interactions between U.S. and foreign-educated lawyers. It builds upon prior work that investigated the impact on U.S. law firms of the development of an international market for legal services and the …

Development Of Law Firm Training Programs: Coping With A Turbulent Environment, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

It's Nothing Personal: The Public Costs Of Limited Liability Law Partnerships, N. Scott Murphy

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Coping With A Turbulent Environment: Development Of Law Firm Training Programs, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Doing Business: The Management Of Uncertainty In Lawyers' Work, John Flood

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Apparently naive, but in fact not, is the question: What do lawyers do? Many scholars assume the central role of the lawyer is that of the advocate, but among lawyers working in law firms advocacy consumes little of their time. Similarly, the term lawyer provides hardly any meaning in itself. The research presented here is based on a participant-observation study of a corporate law firm. The central thesis proposed, in the light of case studies of the selling of shopping mall and the arranging of a bank loan, is that business lawyers are engaged in managing uncertainty for both their …

Law Firms And Clients As Groups: Loyalty, Rationality, And Representation, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

"Understanding...": Processing Information And Values In Clinical Work, Edwin H. Greenebaum

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.