Well, who wants it?
I recently had the experience of listening to several old guard managing partners say how much they disliked the term. I am working on project that describes the changing structure of large law firms. To capture the zeitgeist of the last several years, I wanted to document the point in time when Big Law entered the modern lexicon.
reference this point in a footnote for a forthcoming project. But alas, the footnote took on a life of its own. So I thought I would put the research in a much more appropriate forum — a blog post.
The phrase “Big Law”, using the capital letters,appears to have entered the modern lexicon as pejorative term. It appears to have been coined by theconservative commentator Walter Olson in a 2004 article in the Wall Street Journal in which Olsonsuggests that presidential candidate John Kerry’s stance on tort reform stancewould give “Mr. Kerry’s backers in Big Law no reason to feel threatened orbetrayed.” See Walter Olson, Symbolism 1, Substance 0, Wall St. J., Aug. 23, 2004. It next appeared in relation to HillaryClinton’s presidential aspiration. See JakeVest, They all look alike as they rake inthe green, Orlando Sentinel,Mar. 1, 2006 (“What is the difference between the Bush boys hanging out withBig Oil and Hillary Clinton hanging out with Big Law?”). By late 2007, the tabloid, The New YorkObserver, was using the term regularly to describe the large national law firmsoccupied so much Class A office space throughout the city. After the publication of Jamiethen was usedto describregularly by the daily news tabloid New York Observer, a Its firstuse on Above the Law,
Oh well, that is life in the Big City. The way to under cut its currency of Big Law is to coin a new term that has emotional resonance and aligns with what your organizational is trying to do. It short, it's substance. In the absence of a clear value proposition articulated by law firm leaders, the term Big Law is likely to persist in the modern lexicon.