• Legal Careers and School Connections
  (Job Market Paper)
  
  
  Abstract: I find that partners within law firms are substantially clustered with respect to the law schools attended, using data from the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory on individual lawyers working in US law firms. The observed levels of clustering exceed what can be explained by a random assignment of lawyers to firms of similar size and quality within a city. I find evidence that having attended the same law school as a greater fraction of partners in a firm increases the probability that an associate is promoted. Empirical tests on undergraduate school connections, growth of law school connections, and differential effects of rank and alumni giving rates on the effect of school connections suggest that favoritism rather than efficient behavior may explain the observed pattern of promotions. Furthermore, the effect of law school connections is concentrated at the office-level, which suggests favoritism may come in the form of enrichment on the job, but does not rule out discrimination at promotion.

• The Changing Structure of the Legal Services Industry and the Careers of Lawyers
  (with George P. Baker)
  North Carolina Law Review, June 2006, 84, pp. 1636-82.
  
  Abstract: We use the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory to explore how changes in the nature of the relationship between law firms and their clients may have implications for the structure of the legal services industry, the organization of law firms, and legal careers. We find evidence consistent with a shift towards a commodity relationship and an increased reliance on business-getting. Specifically, we find some evidence for a disappearance of the mid-sized firm and strong evidence of a rise in the largest firms and multi-office firms. We find that leverage is increasing, though mostly in the smaller and mid-sized firms. We find that promotion clocks are increasingly longer and that firms are lessening their use of “up-or-out” promotion policies.

Copyright 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College