Comments on: Are the Cultures of Law Firms Dying?

By: Submission Article

Submission Article — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:33:04 +0000

Law students have become more book oriented rather than research based knowledge. The Law Institutes should seriously look into this matter.

By: Jason Mendelson

Jason Mendelson — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:21:09 +0000

Very interesting. Thanks for the perspective.

By: Suhasini Sakhare

Suhasini Sakhare — Mon, 18 May 2009 11:19:30 +0000

Perhaps this is a phenomenon unique to the UK.

I found that firm culture was predominated by employee culture. Where the employee culture differed from what top management wanted to implement, there were clashes, high attrition, general discontent….what have you.

Where the law firm culture was similar to the employee culture, things hung together.

Employee culture depended on legal training, and the fact that it discourages lawyers from innovation and accountability. Instead breeding slavish devotion to precedent and pressure oriented integrity.

As such, its a welcome move if law firm culture is indeed dead. We could do with a little less culture, a little more accountability.

By: asris

asris — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:39:51 +0000

The current trend seems different but it will ultimately result in a situation where firms will have a certain types of culture. Associates who have felt the downturn are going to be looking for a place called home or they will start their own practices that will reflect their personality.

By: Luis

Luis — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:41:16 +0000

Having recently been wrung through the wringer of the law firm interview process, I can say that (at least in their public-facing appearances) the firms appear pretty homogenous, with the one distinction that there is a stark divide between those firms that want to be Like New York Firms (i.e., we're-serious-and-would-never-have-casual-fridays) and those that don't. I'm sure that office-by-office there are other quirks (for example, the office I ended up working for was considered very laid back, even by the standards of a famously 'relaxed' firm) but overall there was very little visible variation- I think the demands of the 2000-hour year, as much as or more so than the highly flexible lateral market, put paid to that.

By: RGranat

RGranat — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:11:39 +0000

The trend towards the break down of law firm culture will continue as the Internet "atomizes" law firm structure, with the largest law firms retaining their "brand" the longest. The trend towards selecting the lawyer over the law firm, as Jason Anderman points out, will accelerate as transparency increases. Tasks which can be commoditized will be provided by new players in the legal industry, which will further erode the concept of a "law firm culture." The brands of individual lawyers for complex work or "bet your company" work will replace the concept of a "law firm brand" that is reflective of a particular culture.

By: Jason Mendelson

Jason Mendelson — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:03:05 +0000

Normally lawyer but there are a lot of good lawyers so culture is / was important.

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Jason Mendelson

Sent from my iPhone
- please forgive iTypos.

By: Jason Mark Anderman

Jason Mark Anderman — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:23:11 +0000

Having worked at 2 major firms and then having a variety of firms represent my company as in-house counsel, I never found a single firm that felt like they vindicated a common culture. I actually don't think of a law firm as 1 company, but a loose confederation of companies, each one being an equity partner with a book of business and the staff and senior, mid-level and junior attorneys who support that business. Given that the bar association ethical rules leave the rainmaker, for the most part, free to leave and take the clients with him or her, the firm is quite limited in being able to require the rainmakers to behave in any common manner, and, in fact, is incentivized to do the opposite and tolerate differences, even if they hurt service quality, to keep the rainmaker from taking business away from the firm. As a result, when I was in-house counsel I would hire the lawyer, not the firm.

When you need legal services, do you hire by the firm or by the lawyer?

By: Frank Greces

Frank Greces — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:51:39 +0000

Based on the following webster def, one would think corporate culture is alive and well in big law relative to the bottom line, but I would guess with the transformations occuring within big law (associate layoffs, deterioration of the lock-step mentality, etc) if I were hunting for "culture" in big law, it would probably present itself as a "sub culture" of sorts attempting to coexist within the upper echelons of the partnership ranks….

Main Entry: 1cul·ture:
The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization

By: LazyLarry

LazyLarry — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:46:22 +0000

Whether by interpreting law for their own account (class action cornucopia) or on behalf of their paying clients, the legal profession goes where the ca$h is. A "dying legal culture" is more about an increased level of competition for fewer and fewer resources than the fictional notion of company culture in the first place. Any culture is more about the head counsel than anything imbued throughout a firm.

Law firm merging is about growing/consolidating a customer base to cross-sell services because new accounts are harder to come by. There's only so much blood one can squeeze from a turnip so the quest for the next crop has pushed 'culture' out the window. Culture is as culture does concurrent with the the firm's fortunes. Culture images, however they may be characterized, are just marketing. At the end of the day you pay lots and lots of money for theater where your outcome is determined by one of the actors.