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The Old Guard Law Firms of New York City and Related Professions in America : Called "White Shoe Firms"

By Andis Kaulins

There is such a thing as an "old guard" in America's top law firms and related professions. These firms are called "white shoe", a term even today defined by the Princeton WordNetWeb as "denoting a company or law firm owned and run by members of the WASP elite who are generally conservative...".

The Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, goes into more depth in explaining that a "white shoe firm" actually has a broader modern meaning:

"White-shoe firm is a phrase used to describe the leading professional services firms in America, particularly firms that have been in existence for more than a century and represent Fortune 500 companies. It frequently?but not always?refers to securities, law and management consulting firms, and frequently (but not always) refers to firms in New York City. A similar phrase, Magic Circle, refers to law firms in the UK, while the Big Six refers to leading Australian law firms and Seven Sisters to similar Canadian firms....

The following firms are often referred to as being white-shoe firms:

Investment Banks

• Goldman Sachs
• J.P. Morgan & Co.
• Morgan Stanley

M&A advisory firms

• Lazard
• Rothschild

Law firms

• Arnold & Porter
• Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
• Cravath, Swaine & Moore
• Chadbourne & Parke
• Covington & Burling
• Davis Polk & Wardwell
• Debevoise & Plimpton
• Dewey & LeBoeuf
• Goodwin Procter
• Hogan & Hartson
• Hughes Hubbard & Reed
• Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
• Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler
• Ropes & Gray
• Shearman & Sterling
• Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett
• Sullivan & Cromwell
• White & Case
• Willkie Farr & Gallagher
• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr

The "new" white-shoe law firms

While the term "white-shoe" historically applied only to those law firms populated by WASPs, usage of the term has since been expanded to other top-rated prestigious law firms. Many of these firms were founded as a direct result of the exclusionary tendencies of the original white-shoe firms, which provided limited opportunities for Jewish and Catholic lawyers, as well as other non-WASPs.

• Cahill Gordon & Reindel
• Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilto
• Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson
• Kaye Scholer
• Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel
• Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
• Proskauer Rose
• Schulte Roth & Zabel
• Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
• Strook & Strook & Lavan
• Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz
• Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Consulting firms

• Bain & Company
• Boston Consulting Group, The
• McKinsey & Company
  

Note: while these three firms are known rather undisputedly as the "top three" strategy consulting firms, some contended that such firms as A.T. Kearney, Arthur D. Little, Booz & Company, and Monitor Group should also be considered white shoe. Rankings of these firms in Vault and Consulting Magazine varied from year to year, but they have never dethroned the top three firms in overall rankings.

Accounting firms

• PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Ernst and Young
• Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
• KPMG

. . .

Related phrases

• Magic circle, seen as the five (or six) top law firms in the United Kingdom; also used to describe the top four Commercial Chambers at the Bar
• Global Quartet or Big Four, referring to members of the Magic Circle other than Slaughter and May as it has, in general, not pursued a policy of international expansion
• Seven Sisters, referring to the seven Canadian law firms considered to be the top tier
• Big Six, referring to six Australian law firms perceived to be the top tier
• Big Three, referring to three Texas law firms considered to be the top tier

Full post as published by LawPundit on January 09, 2010 (boomark / email).