Rumors of the Death of BigLaw Are Greatly Exaggerated Reviewing Mitt Regan & Lisa H. Rohrer, BigLaw: Money and Meaning in the Modern Law Firm (University of Chicago Press 2021)

• Author: H. Bradley Wendel
• Position: Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, Cornell Law School
• Pages: 177-197

BOOK REVIEW

Rumors of the Death of BigLaw Are Greatly

Exaggerated Reviewing Mitt Regan & Lisa H.

Rohrer, BigLaw: Money and Meaning in the Modern

Law Firm (University of Chicago Press 2021)

W. BRADLEY WENDEL*

ABSTRACT

Many legal profession scholars have predicted the decline, or even demise,

of large law firms. But not only are they still with us, they are flourishing.

Drawing from hundreds of interviews with firm partners, Mitt Regan and Lisa

Rohrer offer a sophisticated explanation of the resilience of this form of organ-

izing the delivery of legal services. Regan and Rohrer see firm managers as try-

ing to solve a Prisoner’s Dilemma and Assurance Game in light of the risk that

partners with a substantial book of business may exit the firm and take their cli-

ents to another firm. Financial and non-financial rewards, many of which are

within the control of firm management, provide firm-specific capital that keep

partners committed to their existing firms and prevent their defection on the lat-

eral market. Regan and Rohrer argue that they have identified a distinctive ethi-

cal conception of lawyering associated with BigLaw that combines business

logic and the logic of professionalism. This Review considers the relationship

between large firm structure and compensation practices and some competing

conceptions of ethical lawyering.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: BIGLAW AND ITS DISCONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

I. BIGLAW AND THE VALUE OF PROFESSIONALISM. . . . . . . . . . . . 181

* Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. © 2023, W. Bradley Wendel. I gratefully

acknowledge the research funding provided by the Judge Albert Conway Memorial Fund for Legal Research,

established by the William C. and Joyce C. O’Neil Charitable Trust.

177

II. LOOKING UNDER THE HOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

A. ALWAYS BE CLOSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

B. THE INTERNAL MARKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

INTRODUCTION: BIGLAW AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Mitt Regan and Lisa Rohrer’s new book, BigLaw: Money and Meaning in the

Modern Law Firm, offers a nuanced explanation of both the economics and ethics

of the large law firm structure.

1

MITT REGAN & LISA H. ROHRER, BIGLAW: MONEY AND MEANING IN THE MODERN LAW FIRM (2021). I

have always disliked the expression “BigLaw,” perhaps because I associate it with the obnoxious legal website

Above the Law and online culture more generally, although the term was used in Larry Ribstein’s 2010 article.

Larry E. Ribstein, The Death of Big Law, 2010 WIS. L. REV. 749 (2010). Regan and Rohrer do not offer a for-

mal definition of the scope of the firms contemplated by their book’s title, except to refer to law firms in the

AmLaw 100 and 200 annual rankings published by American Lawyer magazine. See REGAN & ROHRER, supra,

at 4–5. The familiar distinction drawn by John Heinz and Edward Laumann between two hemispheres of legal

practice, differentiated by the identity of the client and distinct from one another in terms of prestige, does not

map exactly onto the contemporary idea of BigLaw. See J

OHN P. HEINZ & EDWARD O. LAUMANN, CHICAGO

LAWYERS: THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE BAR 379 (1982). A roughly contemporaneous article talks some-

what loosely about large law firms representing corporate clients, which is not a bad definition of BigLaw. See

Robert A. Kagan and Robert E. Rosen, On the Social Significance of Large Law Firm Practice, 37 STAN. L.

REV. 399, 404 (1985). Law professor Deborah J. Merritt has suggested that, based on online chatter among pro-

spective law students, the salient distinction would be between law schools that do a good job placing students

into jobs in BigLaw rather than “shitlaw.” See Deborah J. Merritt, Two Hemispheres, L. S . C ´

CH AFE (May 2,

2015), https://www.lawschoolcafe.org/2015/05/02/two-hemispheres/ [https://perma.cc/752U-SXW2]. Needless

to say, I do not endorse the term “shitlaw” to refer to working in firms that serve the legal needs of individuals or

small companies as opposed to giant multinational corporations. However, the law firm partners interviewed for

this book are mostly involved with producing “bespoke” legal services as opposed to delivering a more routine,

commoditized product. See REGAN & ROHRER, supra, at 40–41, 105 (describing the “legal services cycle” in

which firms initially deliver innovative, high-margin services but these premium profits are eroded as new market

entrants develop more efficient ways to deliver the services). In thinking about the scope of this book, I will use

something like an amalgam of Regan and Rohrer and Heinz and Lauman’s definitions, talking about law firms

representing organizations, not individuals, and with sufficient earnings to have a fighting chance of making it

onto an American Lawyer list, and also concerned with delivering specialized, non-routine services.

The book is the result of a qualitative empirical

study, drawing from 279 interviews with partners at large law firms.

2

Although it

does not ask this question explicitly, it may be understood as an explanation of

how it can be the case that the big-firm mode of organization can not only con-

tinue to exist, but also flourish, despite predictions of its demise. The authors’

account relies on a conception of professionalism that avoids the artificial dichot-

omy between a business and a profession. Rather, as Regan and Rohrer under-

stand it, professionalism is a normative middle ground that allows lawyers to

1.

2. REGAN & ROHRER, supra note 1, at 247–48.

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