Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:03:07.202Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

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.

References

Abel, Richard (1989) American Lawyers. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Abbott, Andrew (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, James N., Davis-Blake, Alison, & Bielby, William T. (1986) “The Structure of Opportunity: How Promotion Ladders Vary within and among Organizations,” 31 Administrative Science Q. 248–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary (1975) Human Capital. 2d Ed. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Bower, Ward (1989) “Rethinking Law Firm Organization—The New Pyramid,” ABA J., April, pp. 90–94.Google Scholar
Buchholz, Barbara (1995) “Of Counsel: It's Not Just for Retiring, Anymore,” ABA J., October, pp. 70–74.Google Scholar
Davis-Blake, Alison, & Uzzi, Brian (1993) “Determinants of Employment Externalization: A Study of Temporary Workers and Independent Contractors,” 38 Administrative Science Q. 195–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drabek, Thomas, Braito, Rita, Cook, Cynthia, Powell, James, & Rogers, David (1982) “Selecting Samples of Organizations: Central Issues and Emergent Trends,” 25 Pacific Sociological Rev. 377–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eccles, Robert, & Crane, Dwight (1988) Doing Deals: Investment Banks at Work. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Ely, Robin J. (1994) “The Effects of Organizational Demographics and Social Identity on Relationships among Professional Women,” 39 Administrative Science Q. 203–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freidson, Eliot (1984) “The Changing Nature of Professional Control,” 10 Annual Rev. of Sociology 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freidson, Eliot (1986) Professional Powers. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Freidson, Eliot, & Rhea, Buford (1963) “Processes of Control in a Company of Equals,” 11 Social Problems 119–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galanter, Marc, & Palay, Thomas (1991) Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firms. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glendon, Mary Ann (1994) A Nation under Lawyers: How the Crisis in the Legal Profession is Transforming American Society. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Goode, William J. (1957) “Community within a Community: The Professions,” 22 American Sociological Rev. 194–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Richard H. (1968) “Professionalization and Bureaucratization,” 33 American Sociological Rev. 92–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heintz, B., & Markham-Bugbee, N. (1986) Two-Tier Partnership and Other Alternatives: Five Approaches. Chicago: American Bar Association.Google Scholar
Heinz, John P., & Laumann, Edward O. (1982) Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar. Chicago: Russell Sage Foundation and American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar
Heinz, John P., & Laumann, Edward O., with Nelson, Robert L. & Schnorr, Paul S. (1997) “The Constituencies of Elite Urban Lawyers,” 31 Law & Society Rev. 441–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heinz, John P., Nelson, Robert L., Laumann, Edward O., & Michelson, Ethan (1998) “The Changing Character of Lawyers' Work: Chicago in 1975 and 1995,” 32 Law & Society Rev. 751–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, Paul (1973) Lions in the Street: The Inside Story of the Great Wall Street Firms. New York: Saturday Review Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Paul (1982) Lions of the Eighties: The Inside Story of the Powerhouse Law Firms. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Jamous, H., & Peloille, B. (1970) “Changes in the French University-Hospital System,” in Jackson, J. A., ed., Professions and Professionalization. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kalleberg, Arne, & Schmidt, Kathryn (1996) “Contingent Employment in Organizations: Part-Time, Temporary, and Subcontracting Relations,” in Kalleberg, A. L., Knoke, D., Marsden, P. V., & Spaeth, J. L., eds., Organizations in America: Analyzing Their Structures and Human Resource Practices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss (1977) Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Klaw, Spencer (1958) “The Wall Street Lawyers,” 57 Fortune, February, pp. 140–44, 192–98, 202.Google Scholar
Kronman, Anthony (1993) The Lost Lawyer: The Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Magali Sarfatti (1977) The Rise of Professionalism. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lisagor, Nancy, & Lipsius, Frank (1988) A Law unto Itself: The Untold Story of the Law Firm Sullivan & Cromwell. New York: William Morrow & Co.Google Scholar
Long, J. Scott (1997) Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Maister, David (1993) Managing the Professional Service Firm. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Mayer, Martin. (1966) The Lawyers. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
McPherson, Michael S., & Winston, Gordon C. (1988) “The Economics of Academic Tenure: A Relational Perspective,” in Breneman, D. and Youn, T., eds., Academic Labor Markets and Careers. New York: Falmer Press.Google Scholar
Merritt, Deborah J., Reskin, Barbara F., & Fondell, Michelle (1993) “Family, Place, and Career: The Gender Paradox in Law School Hiring,” 1993 Wisconsin Law Rev. 395–463.Google Scholar
Mintzberg, Henry (1993) Structure in Fives: Designing Effective Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert L. (1988) Partners with Power: The Social Transformation of the Large Law Firm. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Robert L., & Trubek, David M. (1992) “Introduction: New Problems and New Paradigms in Studies of the Legal Profession,” in Nelson, R. L. & Trubek, D. M., eds., Lawyers' Ideals/Lawyers' Practices: Transformations in the American Legal Profession. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott, & Platt, Gerald (1973) The American University. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfeffer, Jeffrey, & Baron, James N. (1988) “Taking the Workers Back Out: Recent Trends in the Structuring of Employment,” 10 Research in Organizational Behavior 257–303.Google Scholar
Pollock, Joan E. (1990) Turks and Brahmins: Upheaval at Milbank, Tweed. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Jim (1998) “Slowing the Revolving Door: How Three Firms Are Winning the War against Associate Attrition,” The American Lawyer, October, pp. 5–7.Google Scholar
Sciulli, David (1986) “Voluntaristic Action as a Distinct Concept: Theoretical Foundations of Societal Constitutionalism,” 51 American Sociological Rev. 743–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, W. Richard (1965) “Reactions to Supervision in a Heteronomous Professional Organization,” 10 Administrative Science Q. 65–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, W. Richard (1966) “Professionals in Bureaucracies—Areas of Conflict,” in Vollmer, H. & Mills, D., eds., Professionalization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Shepherd, Ritchenya (1999) “One Way to Keep Associates ...,” National Law J., 24 May, p. A13.Google Scholar
Simons, Tal, & Ingram, Paul (1997) “Organization and Ideology: Kibbutzim and Hired Labor, 1951–1965,” 42 Administrative Science Q. 784–813.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smigel, Erwin O. (1969) The Wall Street Lawyer: Professional Organization Man? Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Sørensen, Aage (1994) “Firms, Wages, and Incentives,” in Swedberg, R. & Smelser, N., eds., Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Stolzenberg, Ross M., & Relies, Daniel A. (1997) “Tools for Intuition about Sample Selection Bias and Its Correction,” 62 American Sociological Rev. 494–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uzzi, Brian, & Barsness, Zoe (1998) “Contingent Employment in British Establishments: Organizational Determinants of the Use of Fixed-Term Hires and Part-Time Workers,” 76 Social Forces 967–1007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallace, Jean (1995) “Corporatist Control and Organizational Commitment among Professionals: The Case of Lawyers Working in Law Firms,” 73 Social Forces 811–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Malcolm (1989) “Collegiality, Bureaucratization, and Professionalization: A Weberian Analysis,” 94 American J. of Sociology 945–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wholey, D. R. (1985) “Determinants of Internal Labor Markets in Large Law Firms,” 30 Administrative Science Q. 318–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilensky, Harold (1964) “The Professionalization of Everyone?” 70 American J. of Sociology 137–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, Oliver (1981) “The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach,” 87 American J. of Sociology 548–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wren, Harold G., & Glascock, Beverly J. (1991) The Of Counsel Agreement: A Guide for Law Firm and Practitioner. Chicago: American Bar Association.Google Scholar