In an entertaining critique of a New Republic cover story, described here, about the impact of the Great Recession on BIg Law exemplar Mayer Brown, Mark Obbie at Slate calls the dire prognosis of Big Law's future "grossly exaggerated":
From the cover lines and title (“Big Law in Free Fall,” “The Last Days of Big Law”) to an outlandishly flimsy nut graf (claiming just one in 10 top firms will survive the imminent apocalypse, or so says “one common hypothesis” that then never gets explained or examined), the story looks at one sore throat and proclaims it a cancer pandemic. Its prognosis on the death of the mid-sized full-service firm echoes a forecast made so many times it has lost all credibility. Then the piece takes yet another giant step into journalism hell by shooting readers through a time warp that conveniently skips the past 30 or so years of Big Law business history. Big Law has been declared dying for decades. Pieces touting the death of Big Law have been written for decades. Unfortunately, “Big Law Still Really, Really Dying,” while arguable (except where it’s still really, really profitable), doesn’t sell copy.
