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6 - The changed world of large law firms and their lawyers: an opportune context for organizational researchers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

By
Peter D. Sherer
Edited by
Peter Cappelli
Peter D. Sherer
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Human Resources and Organizational Dynamics, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary
Peter Cappelli
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

He had graduated from Harvard Law School in the early 1970s and had gone to the New York office of a large US law firm, where he had made it up to partner and stayed his entire career. Now he was thinking about retiring. In looking back, he didn't quite know what to think about the firm and how it had changed. Its sheer size, wealth, and geographical expanse had made it different from before even though it had grown gradually and maintained its standing among its rivals. Its lean hierarchy was something of the past as well. While once there had been just partners and associates on the “up to partner or out of the firm” system, now there were a variety of tiers of lawyers, who were managed differently and, as a result, felt differently about the firm. In addition, the firm had gone from developing its own talent with some exceptions to accepting the fact that it had to acquire partners laterally from other firms, a varied lot of real stars, ambitious types from lesser firms, specialists in hot areas, and others who turned out to be just hot air. The firm had varying degrees of success with these talent acquisitions.

The above partner is a microcosm of the changed world of large law firms and their lawyers in the past thirty years.

Type
Chapter
Information
Employment Relationships
New Models of White-Collar Work
 , pp. 179 - 222
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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