Legal Profession Commons^™

Deregulation And The Lawyers' Cartel, Nuno Garoupa, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

At one time, the legal profession largely regulated itself. However, based on the economic notion that increased competition would benefit consumers, jurisdictions have deregulated their legal markets by easing rules relating to attorney advertising, fees, and, most recently, nonlawyer ownership of law firms. Yet, despite reformers’ high expectations, legal markets today resemble those of previous decades, and most legal services continue to be delivered by traditional law firms. How to account for this seeming inertia?

We argue that the competition paradigm is theoretically flawed because it fails to fully account for market failures relating to asymmetric information, imperfect information, and …

Law Firm Dynamics: Don’T Hate The Player, Hate The Game, Tom Kimbrough

SMU Law Review Forum

This paper concerns the business of law, a subject ignored by legal academia and sugarcoated by the organized bar. If law professors express little or no interest in this subject, their students most certainly do. Indeed, I have found that students are desperately hungry for information on the day-to-day realities of working in a law firm. Students are especially keen to learn about possible paths for career advancement within firms, across them, or across the organizations served by the firms.

Paths for career advancement do exist, but they are not easy to find or pursue. Law firms are hardly going …

Lawyers That (Say They) Listen: An Exploratory Study Into Law Firms With Listening Specific Branding, Kacey Henriques

Honors Theses

The following investigation attempts to explore the communication dynamics between law firms and their clients. As shown in this research, clients tend to make note of poor communication skills, specifically listening skills, when they interact with attorneys. In an attempt to appeal to clients who have had negative interactions in respect to listening, several law firms across the country are utilizing branding that stresses their strengths in listening (what I term listening specific branding). In the investigation to come, three law firms are analyzed that utilize this type of branding. Additionally, three law firms that specialize in similar areas of …