Linking career paths, firm organization, and industry structure in legal services

Rachel Beth Parkin

In three related papers, my thesis explores the links between career paths, firm organization, and industry structure in legal services. The first section, in joint work with George P. Baker, explores how changes in the nature of the relationship between law firms and their clients may have implications for each of these three dimensions. 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. Section 2 further explores the relationship between school...