In this essay we make two major claims. The first is that public legislatures should think seriously about giving maximum effect to the principle of freedom of contract in company law. This would not only give corporate lawyers the tool they need to provide legal services that match the needs of...

In the past fifty years, one has heard debates about whether law is a business, a profession, or both, what these terms mean and whether it matters. Regardless of what one thinks about these debates, there is a new paradigm that must be added to the mix, which is the paradigm of lawyers as...

Lawyers need a particular ideal that embodies their skills, qualities, and aspirations - a model to emulate, a standard for judging professional development, and a source of pride in being a lawyer. To accomplish this, the legal profession must function within the professionalism paradigm and...

In the conventional narrative about the role of law in social change, lawyers are the protagonists. A social problem exists and a group or individual calls on a lawyer to do something about it. The lawyer explores various possibilities, decides on a course of action together with her client, and...

When lawyers elect the leaders of their self-regulatory organizations, what sort of people do they vote for? How do the selection processes for elite lawyer sub-groups affect the diversity and efficacy of those groups? This article quantitatively assesses the demographic and professional...

Although rapid law firm growth has been with us since the 1980s, the acceleration of this trend over the last decade by means of mergers is puzzling. Why would normally conservative law firms embark on a merger strategy which appears to encompass significant risk and uncertain benefits? And is...

Under contingent fees the attorney gets a share of the judgment; under conditional fees the lawyer gets an upscale premium if the case is won which is, however, unrelated to the adjudicated amount. We compare conditional and contingent fees in a principal-agent framework where the lawyer chooses...

This article addresses the question of how economic actors (re)shape their organizational and institutional contexts as their activities internationalize. By focusing on law firms, we choose a professional activity that has been regarded as highly determined by the national distinctiveness of...