Occasionally, I read about a lawyer who works for a “White shoe” law firm.
What does this mean, and where did the term come from?
I have no idea, but I’ll guess.
White shoes are rather tacky. When I think of white shoes I think of white belts and loud plaid jackets. People who dress like that tend to be incompetant jerks (think of “Herb Tarlek” on WKRP in Cincinatti.) So if a lawyer works at a “white shoe” law firm, he’s an incompetent jerk in a firm full of incompetent jerks.
Anyway, that’s my guess.
Sorry Johnny, It’s just the opposite:
Google led me to this link for “white shoe law firm”: http://www.mysteryguide.com/levine2.html
An excerpt:
Hard to beat a colorful description like that.
It refers to a time when the most conservative, traditional, and wealthy lawyers would wear white bucks in summertime. The firms were known for their exclusive clientele, and their exclusive membership - restricted to white, protestant males. Some of the names give an idea:
Millbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy (NY)
Bingham, Dana & Gould (Boston)
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft (NY)
Sullivan & Cromwell (NY)
Cravath, Swain & Moore (NY)
Covington & Burling (DC)
There was a whole ethos - no advertising, gentlemanly discretion, avoidance of controversial issues, and so forth.
Few firms are really “white-shoe” anymore - they can’t afford to be. Certainly I know of no major firm that discriminates openly, especially against Jews, as most of these firms did until the 50s and 60s. (The Village Voice recounted one such story: When ca. 1965 the membership committee of Cravath, Swain & Moore first offered to extend partnership to a Jew, the aged Mr. Moore resigned in protest. (Cravath and Swain were long dead.) To its credit, the rest of the partnership dissolved itself, reformed with the Jewish partner included, and invited Mr. Moore to return if he’d like. He did.) Many of the firms remain overwhelmingly white and male, of course, but that may be more because only white males are masochistic enough to endure becoming partner, rather than because of explicit or implicit discrimination.
And as law has become much more competitive, the old values have gone by the wayside. Belonging to the same country club ain’t enough anymore to bring business in the door.
I stand corrected.
But I still think white shoes are Tack-O-Rama.
Only if worn between Labour Day and Memorial Day. 
My dad’s little Texas colloquilaism he likes to tease his big-firm friends with “rug lawyers.” You know, you go into the firm and the rug is so nice you don’t want to walk on it.
Perhaps only, or maybe particularly if, worn as a component of a “Full Cleveland”. I will admit that this, stereotypically on a used car salesman, rather than the ultraconservative “old school” lawyer, is what I associate with white shoes.
To support Johnny L.A. a bit, the first cite I can find in my etymology books would indicate the term “white shoe” first appears in any kind of positive or negative usage in 1957, and was applied in a negative way by J.D. Salinger in the New Yorker thusly
This is currently the leading contender for the origin of the phrase. When it got applied with a different meaning to lawyers, I can’t help.
yabob said
Did that phrase originate with Milan Jacovich? http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:h44lbH5M4mIC:www.thrillingdetective.com/jacovich.html+"full+cleveland"&hl=en Just curious if you know.
Actually I really did have no idea. Just making a WAG.
I thought you were making a defiant class statement.
It seems to me he’s using it in a similar sense to today’s usage: upper class, country club set, etc.
For what it’s worth, I used to be an attorney at a “white-shoe” law firm. There were still some vestiges of the firm’s anti-semitic past.
I hadn’t heard of that author, but the book titled “Full Cleveland” appears to have been published in 1989. It seems to me I’d heard the term before then. It also seems to have had time to mutate into different variations depending on who you talk to, the usual constant being a white belt and white shoes, preferably shiny patent leather. Whatever else goes with them, “tacky” is the keyword - I’ve heard it attached to leisure suits or to loud plaid sport coats coupled with slacks of some inappropriate bright color. The Herb character from WKRP typified the look.