According to one of the self-designated victims of the demise of Dewey & LeBouef, it was a feeding frenzy of legal recruiters and greedy partners (other than himself) that brought down one of those firms that’s supposed to be an institution in the law — also called “biglaw” to distinguish it from “actual law,” I suppose. What makes biglaw big is big hourly rates (called “vanity rates” because they are based on the ego of the lawyer, not his or her actual value), big expenses (with lots of marble, mahogany, and make-work billed by the hour, the three ‘M’s), and big billable days (some even more than 24 hours long). In its most refined form, biglaw lawyers don’t actually practice law so much as client churning.
Reading the following account from the client’s perspective is instructive: Rather than setting compensation of senior partners based on performance, including issues like the rise and fall of business and clients’ need for lawyers or ability to pay, these fools guaranteed one another over half a billion dollars worth of partner compensation up front each year (just a part of the firm’s expenses, which would have approached $1 billion based on these numbers). All the while, these same fools were whining about one another’s compensation, trying to get the senior partner indicted, and looking to headhunters for business advice — there are soap opera plots with better business practices. Continue reading
Wilful Ignorance: Associate fired for making ethics complaint
Unlike most other trades, lawyers are generally entrusted with regulating themselves, either through their trade association (“the Bar”) or through an agency usually affiliated with the state supreme court (and staffed with lawyers). These enforcers are normally passive: They don’t go out looking for problems, they wait for someone to complain, then they screen the complaints (which is where the most common complaint of all — excessive legal fees — gets screened out, but that’s another story). Client complaints are often screened out, too, especially if the client is unable to document the problem or identify something that’s unethical: Losing or charging a lot are not necessarily unethical, for example.
While some sources for complaints include judges and clients, even criminal prosecutors where the lawyer commits a crime, a primary source for ethics complaints to police the legal profession is supposed to be other members of the profession. Lawyers are in a unique position to know the rules and detect problems, e.g., because they have other lawyers opposing them, lawyers who work for them, and lawyers from whom they inherit sometimes messy problems. Continue reading →