Weil’s collapse and the death of corporate loyalty economist.com

On the breakdown of the partnership model in law firms.

Weil is the first great law firm to suffer the death of elite collectivism. It is unlikely to be the last. That is because it is hard to say what Weil might have done differently, and what exactly marked it out for ruin. The result is disorienting: an industry of hundred-year-old stalwarts, any one of which could at any time suffer a debilitating run if the wrong lawyer defects. The partnership structure, once an instrument of stability, is now a liability. Paying an individual anything other than the fees he commands from clients is not an incentive to collegiality, but an invitation to leave. The names on the door are not an indication of shared values, but the dignified parts of an increasingly efficient corporate constitution. Loyalty counts for little; history, nothing at all.