I think we should be asking ourselves, first, where is my community? Once we've figured that out, the second question is, how can I develop a legal practice which benefits my chosen community? Framing the question this way makes a couple things clear:

1. The first question is the hard question.
2. The first question is not actually a professional question at all; it's a personal one.
3. The reason why we all end up going to big firms is not that we're evil, or even selfish, it's that we haven't answered the first question. We are all so busy getting A's on our homework and getting into the next big school that we never quite get around to the first question. And once there's no more school to go to, and somebody's willing to give us a safe paycheck and a safe answer to the first question, we take it.
4. After devoting our whole lives to maximizing our own potentiality and keeping our options open, answering the first question requires that we stop asking ourselves what we can do to become more powerful and starting asking ourselves questions like: “what interests me? What kinds of people do I want to be around? What kinds of day-to-day activities do I want to do with those people?"
5. Answering the first question should take us to a place where we feel excited to be, not guilty about not being
6. The second question is probably pretty easy. Everyone needs a lawyer. Once we each figure out where we fit, it should not be hard to figure out how to make a living off of our trade.

-- MichaelDreibelbis - 08 Feb 2009

Perhaps one of the enticements of Biglaw is that it is not totally community-less. There is a community at a firm -- united by prestige, money, and esprit de corps. Maybe also the opportunity to do work that really affects the world -- a form of power.

Arnold seems relevant here. On p. 25 he identifies four factors necessary for an organization to survive:

1. A creed or set of socially unifying rituals
2. Attitudes which give social prestige to people who subordinate themselves to the group
3. Institutional habits to manage cooperation
4. A tradition that gives validation to the creed

Arnold says: "Granted these essentials, we find successful organizations. Without them, organization can be maintained only by force, and force cannot continue long because it is too exhausting. A number of individuals cannot be found successively to represent the hard-boiled qualities necessary for such organizations."

Assuming that Arnold's criteria hold true to some extent (they seem arbitrary to me -- or perhaps could be simplified to "a creed which helps individuals submit to the group"), then how do law firms, as organizational communities, fit in?

They certainly have survived, and are probably considered successful. Is it because their creeds are strong enough to offer a sense of community to some people? Or is it because they actually do have enough hard-boiled individuals (a succession of managing partners) to succeed absent a unifying creed? Corporations and law firms that are nominally united by a pursuit of wealth still seem to be able to develop institutional cultures and a sense of community.

Of course, surviving and existing are completely different things than being an ideal environment for a young lawyer to work in...

-- GavinSnyder - 10 Feb 2009