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The Broken Covenant: A Retrospective -- 'Partners for Life'?

By Jeffrey A. Lowe
March 27, 2008

For today's young lawyers, that notion belongs to a different era, one that seems as far away as the New Deal and Tammany Hall. But it really wasn't all that long ago that this concept was the anchor of law firm life, a covenant that provided stability and security for the firm's members.

The covenant worked as follows: Join the firm, be a good lawyer, work hard and seven or eight years later you receive the golden handshake welcoming you into the partnership. Thereafter, your compensation would rise in lockstep with your peers, moving inexorably higher as you claimed your rightful place among the firm's senior partners. Of course, there were always the 'worker bees' and the business generators, but the covenant provided that all were to be treated (mostly) equally, borne of a collective notion of common purpose and shared reward. Over the last 30 years, however, this covenant has steadily eroded across firms of all sizes, resulting in a culture that more closely resembles baseball free agency than a 'gentlemanly' profession. This article examines the covenant and several of the factors that led to its demise.

What Broke the Covenant?

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