RIP Stroock (1876–2023)
Irish BIshop George Berkeley (1685–1753) famously asked, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, would there be a sound?” His notion is neither as cutesy nor as vexed as it...
View ArticleThe Associate Salary Wars Yet Again
“Cravath To A Million Squillion!” Sorry, but we’ve seen this dance so many times before that, you have to admit, we all know the script by heart. Cravath (or other blue chip firm [insert here]) bumps...
View ArticleWho Needs To Be Listening To Your Clients? You do.
The following column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. For unfathomable reasons many law firms and lawyers eschew client feedback. The reason we’re baffled by this is that at its most...
View ArticleThree Cheers for Black Box Comp
When it comes to partner pay, the first thing everyone salaciously wants to know is “how high is up?” And second by a nose is probably “Who’s on top and by how much, especially compared to me?”...
View ArticleIs the American Legal Profession a Guild?
This is one in our occasional series of excerpts from my yet-to-be-published new book, treating, among other things, the historic roots of our profession tracing back to medieval guilds. I hope you...
View ArticleIf Supply Grows Faster Than Demand,…
Sometimes it’s the quiet, seemingly unremarkable, things that ultimately rear up and bite you. Here may, or may not, be one. Let’s start with this chart from Thomson Reuters redoubtable annual...
View ArticleThe Myth of the “Equity” Partner
This column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. Let’s get something straight from the get-go: “Equity” as it is known in Law Land is a chimera. Unlike in the other 98% of the economy,...
View ArticleThe Fable of Starbucks
Few brands are more prominent in our daily lives (well, at least if you’re a Western world urban dweller) than Starbucks. Its rise to prominence has become standard-issue corporate lore: From its...
View ArticleSingle Tier is Dead: Long Live Single Tier
Comes word that Cleary Gottlieb is abandoning its increasingly rarefied “single tier” status and will begin naming Non Equity Partners “with immediate effect.” The intrepid Roy Strom of Bloomberg Law...
View ArticleThe 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics Goes To…..
The Nobel in Econ (a/k/a The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) for 2024 was awarded a few days ago to Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson of MIT and to James Robinson...
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