Talk:Law firm

2004 comment

Removed this from the header:

Some law firms are organized as professional corporations, but that arrangement is increasingly rare now that limited liability partnerships (LLPs) are available in many jurisdictions. In the United States, the LLP form is popular because law firms organized as corporations are commonly treated as personal service corporations which are subject to significant tax penalties.

This statement is an over-generalization. P.C.'s are still very common business structures in many U.S. jurisdictions. I put in a new paragraph for "organization". Ellsworth 14:59, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Redirects needed to this article

The following should absolutely redirect to this article: Law company, Legal firm, Legal company.
These would make it FAR easier to locate his article and to make links to it.
Personally, when I have need legal advice, I visited a legal company. 98.81.23.222 (talk) 20:57, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Notable law firm?

There is currently an interesting VfD going on in relation to a 60-lawyer law firm. What is at stake is whether this law firm is notable. Your opinion is welcome, here. Thanks. --Edcolins 09:16, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Are we certain that law firms exist? I was told that they do not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.74.8.130 (talk) 16:01, 13 November 2009 (UTC) Yes - quite sure that they exist!

Partnership

The claim to oldest law firm is a matter of dispute. For example, from the Wikipedia Article on the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the United States Army: "General George Washington founded the U.S. Army JAG Corps on 29 July 1775, with the appointment of William Tudor as the Judge Advocate General. The Army Judge Advocate General's Corps is the oldest of the judge advocate communities in the U.S. armed forces – as well as the oldest law firm in the United States." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.138.26.242 (talk) 00:48, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

What do the partners have to gain from promoting the associates to partners?

The associates don't leave all pissed off that they wasted 7 or 8 years at the firm and got nothing. --Nelson Ricardo 00:46, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

While that's true, law firms obstensibly gain the following for promoting associates to partners: (a) capital (associates have to buy into the firm to become a partner, generally a significant sum of money, (b) increased billing rate (law firms charge clients significantly more per hour for partners) and (c) loyalty (as a part-owner, a partner is paid more through a share of profits than a set salary or bonus, in theory encouraging harder work and an ownership mentality). But, yeah, keeping associates around is a big part of it too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.116.193.94 (talk) 19:23, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

The U.K. has a similar rule about keeping non-lawyers out of ownership of law firms?

Funny, I was just reading the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990 and Section 66 explicitly overturns Section 39 of the Solicitors Act 1974 (barring solicitors from entering into partnerships with non-solicitors). Unless there's some informal Law Society rule still in place I don't know about. Is the article correct? --Coolcaesar 23:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The Legal Services Act 2007 in the UK has changed the ownership rules and Alternative Business Structures (ABS) allow law firms to share profits with non-lawyers. There are similar rules in Australia. I have made one change to the article, others may be required. - Alex Hamilton

Small grammar error.

The title is often seen among former associates who do not make partner, or who are laterally recruited to other firms, or who work as in-house counsel and then return to the big firm environment.

I am not sure of the meaning of this sentence.

The sentence is describing various categories of attorneys who hold the title "of counsel" or "special counsel" which is described in the immediately preceding sentence! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Coolcaesar (talk • contribs) 17:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC).

Makes sense to me. -Elvey

Is this English? "...may lead upon profitable results to partnership." If not I can't understand it enough to see how to fix it. Perhaps it means that an attorney of counsel to a law firm may be offered a partnership if his work brings it large profits. But then 'may' is a vague term.--Elvey (talk) 20:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Walmart comparison

In one section, it compares the world's largest law firm to Wal Mart in terms of revenue and employment. Is it me, or is this a bit of a silly comparison to make, since a multinational retail company is always going to be larger than a law firm. A-Nottingham | Talk 14:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Salary

The information regarding markets outside of New York City "usually" matching New York's bonuses is simply wrong. The reference provided does not even support this proposition. Every market has a different bonus each year; few narkets, if any regularly match New York's. Occasionally, an individual firm will announce it is matching for another city (such ad Washington, DC), but that will generally put that firm as the high end of the spectrum for bonuses in that market. 15 April 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.165.1.110 (talk) 04:13, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I concur with your criticism. Also, the salary section smells suspiciously of original research. It's also very U.S.-centric. But it raises an interesting issue that I will have to look into when researching Attorney-at-law (my ongoing revision as usual is stalled because I am too busy). --Coolcaesar (talk) 11:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not understand why salary is here at all; why would a salary review of a few large american cities be included in the encyclopedia entry for a law firm? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dalans (talk • contribs) 21:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I concur with your confusion. I'm going to purge the overly-specific U.S. material on salaries and layoffs within a week unless someone provides sources for the U.S. data as well as comparative data from other major countries to balance it out. The entire section is original research, POV, and undue weight in violation of WP:UNDUE. Notably, the editor who inserted that section has never defended it on the talk page. --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:39, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Rankings

Is there an NPOV issue here: "Most notably, the report ranked the percentages of women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and gays & lesbians at America's top law firms." It seems like the author's opinion is that this was the most notable aspect of the rankings. Perhaps this is unusual in that other rankings did not pay attention to such an issue, but if so then those rankings should be covered here as well. Vault.com comes to mind, for example. Poludamas (talk) 00:01, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Copyright ?

I noticed that parts of this article appear here under copyright:-

http://www.lupton-fawcett.co.uk/Home/tabid/684/Default.aspx

Which came first ???

Mahutchinson (talk) 15:50, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

This article is too US centric

This article is too US centric, LLP and so forth only exist in the Anglo-American system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.2.11.70 (talk) 00:04, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

It is centered on the U.S.A. and the U.K. because the largest and most influential law firms in the world (who are involved in many of the most important cases in the world) are based in the U.S.A. and in the U.K. The fact is that most developing countries simply don't have economies that require (or are capable of supporting) the development of large law firms. Most countries also lack a large number of high-quality law schools and universities with strong sociology, political science, and psychology departments. This is important as most of the published studies of law firms come either from law professors, sociologists of the professions, or lawyers who studied sociology or other related social sciences as undergraduates. Wikipedia is not a publisher of original research and can only paraphrase what has already been published elsewhere. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:32, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to pull the globalize tag soon because it's totally useless. The problem is that there is nearly no reliable literature comprehensively analyzing law firms outside of the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. (I checked). Only those four countries can afford to support large sociology, Political Science, and psychology departments in their univsities that can do research on issues involving sociology of the legal profession and sociology of law firms. Most countries cannot afford to support advanced sociology research, because it is so time-consuming and difficult (it often involves interviews of dozens or hundreds of subjects followed by months of analysis).--Coolcaesar (talk) 15:55, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay, it's going now. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:58, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Three other countries that have strong legal professions are Japan, Germany, and India, though it might be notable that thise have fewer lawyers per capita than (for example) the United States.

Also, if someone is complaining about the fact that this article centers on the British legal system and its close associates, they are perfectly free to start their own articles with titles like "Law firms in Germany, Japan, India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, France, Italy, China, ..." Less complaining and more doing!

Or you could create one on "Law firms in the countries of the Romance Languages: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, France, Italy, Latin America, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela. 98.81.23.222 (talk) 21:17, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Is "David Feldman's Crisis Post Blog including commentary on the legal industry" relevant?

Is "David Feldman's Crisis Post Blog including commentary on the legal industry" relevant enough to this article to include it in the external links section? -Noosentaal^·talk· 17:24, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Find Law Firms

Attorney-Client Matching for clients to find the right law firms are done through:

GoodSharks.com

Or Legal Directories:

Findlaw

LegalMatch —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.130.75.46 (talk) 00:23, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

First multi-lawyer law firms

It can't be right that legal partnerships were invented in the USA just before 1861. There were many legal partnerships in England in the 18th century, if not before. Cyclopaedic (talk) 11:42, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

That comes from a book by Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr., one of the most preeminent legal scholars alive today. Do you have any sources for your position? --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:41, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

mainly own knowledge, but I did check by Googling the histories of some law firms, eg

http://www.farrer.co.uk/About-us/History/ Several references to legal partnerships in the 18th century

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Lawrence_Graham see the history section – “in 1730 the first law firms in the UK were registered; Coulthard Wildman and Graham was one of the first to form. In the 1760s James and Thomas Graham were the first 'Grahams' to join the firm.”

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=IoRPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA329&lpg=PA329&dq=1730+partnership+attorney&source=bl&ots=7C7s-05GVZ&sig=oFk6OQLL0APcBxOYvdXfTd4oHa8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=urvIT9OBD66W0QWYzdXWAQ&ved=0CH8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=1730%20partnership%20attorney&f=false 1831 law report “of importance to the profession” about attorneys in partnership

http://colonialseminar.uga.edu/Hadden.pdf

I suspect the source is being taken too literally. I'm sure partnership was the normal form of practice for solictors and attorneys in England (and probably in America) well before the mid-19th Century. Cyclopaedic (talk) 13:14, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Another one http://www.fosters-solicitors.co.uk/downloads/history.pdf . I have seen reference to a 4-partner firm in the 18th Century.

See Rose Law Firm, which asserts that this American firm began in 1820. See also their history page, which says: "Rose Law Firm, the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi River, traces its origin to November 1, 1820, before Arkansas statehood, when Robert Crittenden and Chester Ashley entered into an agreement for a 'Partnership in the Practice of Law.' This partnership agreement hangs on the wall of the firm's boardroom as a reminder of our long and storied history." Studerby (talk) 21:05, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Additionally, Abraham Lincoln had (successively) three different partners in his practice of law, all before 1860. Studerby (talk) 21:08, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

A year on with no change, so now deleted the paragraph in its entirety as there is nothing there that survives scrutiny, although a section on the postwar growth of large law firms would be useful. I seem to recall that Freshfields was sizeable pre-war but I don't have a source for that. Cyclopaedic (talk) 14:16, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

What are you doing? That passage I drafted was based on a citation to a book by one of the most preeminent experts on the legal profession in the United States. Even if Hazard's analysis is possibly flawed, at least it doesn't constitute original research in violation of WP:NOR, which is what your above citations constitute. --Coolcaesar (talk) 14:55, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

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