The Other Legal Profession and the Orthodox View of the Bar: The Rise of Colorado's Elite Law Firms is a new article by
Eli Wald, University of Denver S
turm College of Law. It is forthcoming in the
University of Colorado Law Review. Here's the abstract:
The current generation of legal profession scholarship has explored the rise and organization of large law firms. A “standard story” has developed regarding the structure of large firms, their hiring and promotion patterns as well as their discriminatory culture, past and present. This Article shows that the “standard story” may offer too narrow an understanding of large firms and the challenges they and the legal profession in general face. It documents the rise of Colorado’s largest law firms, examining the background conditions that enabled their emergence, how they came to occupy a dominant position atop the Colorado legal profession, and their organization, culture and growth patterns. Contrasting the Colorado experience with the “standard story,” the Article offers new insights about the organization of large firms, in particular regarding the operation of various discriminatory mechanisms in that setting.
