Corporate & Securities Law

The End of One-Stop Shopping?

By John Wallbillich

There is a definite sense about the answer to this question when you read today’s article in the Wall Street Journal about the travails facing many large law firms.

Some of the background on the Heller Ehrman dissolution is particularly compelling.

Here’s a key point, quoting William Brennan of Altman Weil:

“The marketplace is so intensively competitive that when firms encounter financial difficulty, the best and brightest lawyers immediately say, ‘I don’t want to take a risk with my clients and my compensation,’ and they jump quickly to a less risky platform,” says Mr. Brennan, the consultant. “Within weeks a firm can go from having financial difficulty to having a run on the bank.”

So how much confidence does a GC have in a months-long RFP that will send a major part of business to a single firm?

Perhaps it will be like the banks: clients have to find the ones that are too big to fail.

And exactly where do you find such banks today?

So perhaps you look for a firm that is small enough to fly under the radar…

Full post as published by The Wired GC on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).