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Article: The client is sometimes right. (a survey of the legal profession)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- July 18, 1992
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Being in a service business means knowing who is supposed to serve whom
FOR a clue as to how wrenching it has been for lawyers to become businessmen, listen to the legal profession's elite at big law firms react defensively to the suggestion that the change is only recent. "Any lawyer who hasn't always known that he was working in a service industry", says James Hurloch, managing partner at White & Case, a New York firm, "has really missed the boat."
Maybe. But until two years ago, the law was an unreal sort of industry: one virtually unaffected by economic cycles, in which growth seemed limitless and big firms rarely failed. Inevitably, these traits ...