The Death of Big Law Forum

[brickman]

Larry Ribstein wrote an article back in September of 2009 titled "The Death of Big Law ". After reading the 52 page article, one can not hope but feel overwhelmed by a sense of dread. What does TLS think about this article? Pessimism?

[MeTalkPrettyOneDay]

tl;dr

[prezidentv8]

EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!!!

[UandIaresplittsville]

Roland Barthes wrote Death of the Author in 1967, doesn't stop Dave Eggers from bothering the crap out of me to this day...

[SteelReserve]

For those of us who never wanted biglaw because we knew how miserable it is, the death of biglaw makes us sad only to the extent that less jobs in biglaw means more people competing for real lawyer jobs. Hopefully biglaw won't "die" for a few more years.

Keep billing those hours biglawyers...while you can.

[ps494]

For those of us who never wanted biglaw because we knew how miserable it is, the death of biglaw makes us sad only to the extent that less jobs in biglaw means more people competing for real lawyer jobs. Hopefully biglaw won't "die" for a few more years.

Keep billing those hours biglawyers...while you can.

+1

I'm really concerned about this. Now people that aren't really passionate about certain area of law such as PI will be gravitating towards these areas, because they can't find a job anywhere else.


Does anyone know if firms are starting to hire again? Are they at least starting to employ associates that were deferred?

[Kohinoor]

To be fair, after a 52 page article about anything, I'd start crying, losing hope.

[ps494]

To be fair, after a 52 page article about anything, I'd start crying, losing hope.

I strongly suggest that you do not become a lawyer.....

[brickman]

To be fair, after a 52 page article about anything, I'd start crying, losing hope.

lulz. It wasn't so bad. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Ghetto Cowboy" in the background makes everything tolerable.

[Kohinoor]

To be fair, after a 52 page article about anything, I'd start crying, losing hope.

lulz. It wasn't so bad. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Ghetto Cowboy" in the background makes everything tolerable.

Ghetto Cowboy is 3 minutes long. Did you play it 15 times while reading?

[brickman]

To be fair, after a 52 page article about anything, I'd start crying, losing hope.

lulz. It wasn't so bad. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Ghetto Cowboy" in the background makes everything tolerable.

Ghetto Cowboy is 3 minutes long. Did you play it 15 times while reading?

I lie. It was their greatest hits.

[MC Southstar]

Honestly, Bone thugz would be the last thing I would want to listen to while reading anything.

[brickman]

Honestly, Bone thugz would be the last thing I would want to listen to while reading anything.

It helped cushion the crushing blow of the article.

[crazycanuck]

The world is ending in 2012, so it doesn't matter.

True story.

[nealric]

Relax guys, biglaw isn't going anywhere.

Out of 250 Amlaw firms, fewer than 10 have gone under. Compare that to the banks. Is anybody predicting the death of big banks?

[09042014]

The economy has already stabilized (but not recovered), and Big Law still remains, but is just smaller. Its an economically viable business model.

[APimpNamedSlickback]

so is law considered a leading or trailiing indicator relative to the real economy? i'm guessing the latter, so until the demand for legal services picks up, that the economy is trending up might not mean anything for our class...we might still end up jobless and on welfare.

[letsrun]

There has been no recovery in the "real" economy.

Housing prices are still too high and the debt situation has only gotten worse. The only reason things are humming along is because the government is responsible for 96% of mortgages today and other bs programs like cash for clunkers.

Law won't recover for at least 5 years at a minimum.

[09042014]

so is law considered a leading or trailiing indicator relative to the real economy? i'm guessing the latter, so until the demand for legal services picks up, that the economy is trending up might not mean anything for our class...we might still end up jobless and on welfare.

I'll probably end up jobless even if its booming, but that's because I'm a loser.

I think, provided the economy doesn't start crashing again, Class of 11 will be the worst for hiring. A lot of Class of 10 will be differed a year taking the jobs '11 would have filled in the future. And instead of hiring 2L's paying them 30K then differing them a year, firms just never hired them.

Effectively Class of 10 and Class of 11 are competing for the same jobs, and firms already wasted 30K recruiting class of 10, so guess who won.

Hiring won't be like it was pre 2008, but it won't be as bad as it was OCI 2009.

But I sure as hell don't want to find out, so I'm considering OCI 2009 to be the new standard.

[underdawg]

For those of us who never wanted biglaw because we knew how miserable it is, the death of biglaw makes us sad only to the extent that less jobs in biglaw means more people competing for real lawyer jobs. Hopefully biglaw won't "die" for a few more years.

Keep billing those hours biglawyers...while you can.

for those of us realistic about loans, we now have to hear more garbage about people too damn cool for biglaw. it blows hard

[Bankhead]

I don't need 52 pages to tell me it's dying.

[crazycanuck]

There has been no recovery in the "real" economy.

Housing prices are still too high and the debt situation has only gotten worse. The only reason things are humming along is because the government is responsible for 96% of mortgages today and other bs programs like cash for clunkers.

Law won't recover for at least 5 years at a minimum.

TITCR

The U.S.A has a band-aid thrown over a sawed off arm.

[letsrun]

CrazyCanuck, thank you for seeing the light with me. Many on here don't understand the grim future.

We are in a credit-driven downturn, unlike previous downturns since the GD, and it's not coming back. Bernanke has done a good job of propping things up in the short term but he has sacrificed the medium and longterm viability of America. Next week we have treasury auctions of some 159 billion dollars. One day we will have a failed auction and that won't be fun.

Many of the kids on this forum will have 150k+ debt with next to nothing to show for it for many years to come.

[brickman]

Just some pleasant excerpts from Larry Ribstein's article:

"The reputational capital model of the law firm assumes that clients need help judging the value of legal services and constraining lawyer-client agency costs. Yet several developments have reduced the information asymmetry between lawyers and clients and, therefore, the profit from providing a reputational bond.

The first development is increasingly sophisticated information technology. Big Law gets some of its competitive advantage from its ability to mobilize on short notice substantial human and technical resources, particularly including legal research and document storage and retrieval. Computerized legal research, fast Internet connections and declining costs of data storage and retrieval decline have eroded Big Law’s scale advantage.

Second, broader availability of up-to-the-minute information about the law and lawyers has reduced clients’ need to rely on the historical information embedded in a large firm’s reputation."

[LawandOrder]

Direct link for anyone who wants to read:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cf ... 30&mirid=1