The Last Days of the Philadelphia Lawyer

On the website of the Philadelphia Bar Association is a section marked “Legends of the Bar.” Click on it, and up pop the names and biographies of dozens of lawyers out of Philadelphia’s past, from Andrew Hamilton — who in the mid-18th century won the case that essentially established freedom of the press in America, and to whom the phrase “Philadelphia Lawyer” was first applied — to more-modern legends like Harold Kohn, the Dilworth Paxson partner who in the 1960s revolutionized the legal profession by inventing the class-action lawsuit. The list is a reminder not only of high ideals that lawyers once aspired to, but of Philadelphia’s rich legacy of legal talent. In the culture at large, the phrase “Philadelphia Lawyer” means an attorney who’s particularly gifted and crafty — It would take a real Philadelphia Lawyer to get us out of this. But to be a Philadelphia Lawyer in Philadelphia, where there are nearly 16,000 attorneys, where one in five Center City offices is occupied by a law firm, has always meant something even more. Lawyers here are a crucial part of both our economy and our identity — a blend of what the auto industry is to Detroit and the Texas Rangers (the ones with guns, not baseball hats) are to Texas. Which is why the changes that have occurred in the profession — and that continue to occur — are so significant.

Lawyers, it probably goes without saying, like to argue, but the one thing they all agree on is that over the past two decades, their once high-minded profession has been transformed into a high-stakes business. “A revolution has occurred,” says Michael Coleman, one of the city’s preeminent legal recruiters. That revolution may only be a prologue to an even bigger transformation now taking place: the high-stakes business slamming head-on into the fast-moving, and generally unforgiving, 21st-century global economy.

“The world is flat,” Alderman tells his Penn Law students one day, as they’re seated around a seminar table. Alderman’s course is called “The Law of Law Firms,” and in contrast to the legal-reasoning courses that make up the bulk of a law student’s education, this class attempts to give the next generation of lawyers a realistic view of the business they’re getting themselves into.

Now, the leveling of the economic playing field doesn’t mean that, say, Dick Sprague is suddenly in danger of being replaced by some heavily accented Indian guy working for a few bucks an hour. But the technological and economic changes affecting all of us are certainly making an impact on lawyers — particularly on the dozen or so largest, most prestigious firms in Philadelphia. For starters, the pressure is on firms to be bigger and broader — to open offices in all the places around the world where their clients are doing business. It’s why the city’s most profitable firm, Dechert, recently opened an office in Hong Kong; why fast-growing Duane Morris now has two offices in Vietnam; why Blank Rome has all but joined Match.com in hopes of finding a West Coast partner with which to merge.

---