Where did High-End Plaintiffs’ Lawyers go to Law School?

One of my favorite topics in my Law Firms as a Business Organization course  is the plaintiffs' bar, which runs the gamut from soft tissue personal injuries ("car wreck cases"), to product liability and mass torts, to class action litigation.  Law students and law professors know very little about this practice area.  From the student perspective, this gap may be due to the fact that firms that specialize in this area tend to be small and rarely recruit students through on-campus interviews.  Similarly, the corporate bar heavily recruits from top national law schools, where most law professors were educated.  So legal educators are top-heavy with corporate law practice.

In some respects, the plaintiffs' bar appears to reflect an idiosyncrasy in the market for legal talent.  On the one hand, successful plaintiff-side trial and class action lawyers often earn higher incomes than partners at the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms.  On the other hand, these lawyers tend to be graduates of non-elite law schools.   Below is graphic (generated for my class), which compares the educational backgrounds of members of the Inner Circle 100, which is the 100 best plaintiffs' side trial lawyers in the nation (and includes Joe Jamail, John Edwards, Phil Corboy, and, until his death, Johnny Cochrane), and a sample of five Am Law 200 law firms.
Granted, some (or possibly all) of this differential can be explained by the more stable earnings trajectory of corporate lawyers.  But I also wonder whether successful trial practice may entail attributes that are not strongly correlated with law school entering credentials (e.g., LSAT and UGPA).  For example, effective trial lawyers may have better affect recognition, and thus have a superior ability to size up their adversaries and communicate with a jury.

Along these lines, my Law Firms class read a excellent ethnographic study by Sara Parikh and Bryant Garth, entitled "Philip Corboy and the Construction of the Plaintiffs' Personal Injury Bar," 26 L & Soc. Inquiry 269 (2005).   Philip Corboy is a famous Chicago personal injury lawyer (and Inner Circle 100 member) that worked to institutionalize the modern plaintiffs' bar, creating novel legal theories that compensated for serious injuries, lobbying the Illinois legislature for pro-plaintiff legislation, and training several generations of skilled practitioners through this law firm, which was informally known as "Corboy University."   

Yet, according to the article, Corboy was drawn to mentor people like himself -- non-establishment ethnics (Corboy is Catholic, which worked against him in the early Post-War era) who attended local law schools, such as Loyola or DePaul.  But perhaps, implicitly,  this was a demographic that was likely to be well-received by Chicago juries? 

This is a research topic that will have to wait as I finish up many other projects, but I would like to parse out how social forces and individual skills and personality traits (e.g., risk adversion, extroversion, affect recognition) impact the career trajectories of young lawyers.   The plaintiffs' bar might be a good place to start.

Comments

[lawyers office]

Corporate attorneys office

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[William T. Wilson]

Oh, and KC, the only thing reprehensible about the legal profession is lawyers at very large law firms who will routinely stoop to every means possible to “win” a large case, so the rich can stay richer, while acting as pure as the driven snow. Remember the sexual history questions in the tobacco suits? Stop reading from the Republican Party’s daily talking points and come join the rest of us in the real world. Thirty years as house counsel, and I actively managed litigation for all but five years of it, and I can count on one hand the number of “frivolous” suits I encountered. Under the Republican standard for “frivolous litigation,” Brown v. Board of Education would have been dismissed and Thurgood Marshall sanctioned.

[William T. Wilson]

Very interesting; as corporate counsel who has seen attorneys bills at “elite” law firms skyrocket, I have always wondered why Jim Beasley (a Philadelphia plaintiffs attorney who supposedly drove a bus prior to law school), who went to “ugh” Temple Law School, was routinely able to wipe the floor with supposedly smarter attorneys at Philadelphia’s snob elite, who wouldn’t touch you upon graduation unless you were Coif. If those guys are so damn smart, how come they lose so often? As far as the ethics etc., both sides could use a refresher on Professional Responsibility, as the many sanctions against “white shoe” firms all over the country for things like discovery abuse attest.

By the way, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association did a study to look at correlation between academic credentials and other factors, and partnership at large firms, and did not find very much convincing evidence that being Coif etc. makes you any more likely to be a partner. The study is available at http://www.mcca.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pageid=614

[Deborah Hensler]

Thanks, Ed. I was searching for just such data for a piece I'm writing on tort reform. Hopefully, this will stimulate someone to replicate your approach with a larger and broader sample.

[KC]

Graduates of top law schools don't want to be plaintiff's lawyers because it's disgraceful. As a plaintiff's lawyer, you are a leech and a scourge to society. We don't need lawyers as self-appointed legislatures of "the little guy['s]" self interest.
Sure, a plaintiff's lawyer can make a lot of money. So can a mob boss. They're similarly reprehensible forms of extortion.

[recent graduate]

as a recent graduate at a top 5 law school... there were no plaintiff firms interviewing. Furthermore, it was "frowned" on, certainly unofficially, perhaps even officially. These were "bottom-feeders" no ethics, no prestige, etc. There was tremendous pressure to interview and go to large law firms in major cities -- from financial (paying off large loans) to "exits" strategy. And yes, all the professors who practiced law, were at major law firms -- enhancing percieved prestige.

Another factor maybe the number of large corporate firm and partner benefactors, naming classrooms, chairs, etc. I doubt these large donors would be happy to know any students were going to "plaintiff" firms.

[A former student]

Professor Henderson,

I wish I had seen this in Corporations! Interesting posting. I agree with your assertions. I like to use the analogy of working in sales.

Sales jobs based on commission have a lower bar to entry than salaried jobs, with a potential for a high payoff for some, but not for very many. You get paid for performance, or "eat what you kill" as you would say.

But most of us would prefer the guaranteed money of a salary if we can get it, and jump through the hoops we are told to jump through to get it (go to elite school, etc.)

I think good salespeople would probably be good trial lawyers. Unfortunately I am not a good salesman, but I have never really tried. Too risk averse.

And I am assuming (with no empirical evidence) that people in commission based sales positions on average have less of a prestigious background.

Long winded way to agree with your risk aversion assertion.

[Lawrence HQ. Liu]

very good ideas...and support u!