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Moving Away from “Up or Out”: Determinants of Permanent Employment in Law Firms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Elizabeth H. Gorman
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Abstract

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Large law firms are increasingly moving away from the “up or out” organizational model by employing lawyers on a permanent basis under a variety of titles, a trend with important consequences for the structure of lawyers' career opportunities. Some firms, however, have moved farther in this direction than others. Using data from a nationwide sample of law firm establishments, this study investigates factors that lead firms to implement permanent employment arrangements. The results show that firms that are more exposed to new features of the changing legal environment make greater use of permanent employees. Permanent employment arrangements are more common in law firms where work is more complex, ties to clients are weaker, and lawyers place less emphasis on collegiality. Effects are stronger for lawyers with nontraditional titles such as “senior attorney” and “senior counsel” than for permanent associates, suggesting that firms employ two distinct categories of permanent non-partner lawyers.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 33 , Issue 3: Changing Employment Statuses in the Practice of Law , 1999 , pp. 637 - 666
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I am grateful to Aage Sørensen, Peter Marsden, George Baker, Ruth Aguilera-Vaques, John Dencker, Jody Hoffer Gittell, Paul Lawrence, Rakesh Khurana, and Leigh Weiss for their valuable comments on earlier drafts and to John Heinz and Edward Laumann for generously making available a portion of their data. Support for this research was provided by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (No. SBR-9811144), a Harvard University Graduate Society Term-Time Dissertation Research Fellowship, and a Harvard University Graduate Society Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

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