If you see a sign that says, “Higgins, Bertleby, Patel, & Chong,” you know instantly that they are a law firm, and not, say, a Landscaping company, or frogurt shop. Why is this? Why do you never see something like “The Law Guys” or “LawyerZone”?
I realize lawyers are “professionals” and see themselves as such, but even Doctors will do stuff like “Springfield Medical Group” sometimes. Isn’t it tedious to change all the signs, letterheads, and business cards when a new partner is minted or one retires?
My understanding is that it’s actually a rule of the state Bar Association in many states that law firms be named after people. Where the rule has been challenged the courts have generally sided with the challengers so there are some like the Summit Law Group in Washington.
As I understand it, most (if not all) law firms are limited partnerships, rather than corporations, so that may come into play.
Generally speaking, the law community tends to be very traditional and resistant to change. “Respectable” lawyers also usually dislike ambulance-chasers, and the sorts of lawyers who advertise on TV (which probably correlates strongly with the kind of lawyers who would want to go by “LawyerZone”).
Pixel Dent’s has a point about it being mandated by law. But I also thing it might originate with the nature of the business. A law firm is a purely service business - its sole product is the skills of its staff.
And it’s essentially an adversarial business. There will be two sides, each with its own lawyers trying to advocate their side. So unlike professions like physicians or architects, lawyers have to promote the idea that they will do a better job than other lawyers would do in the same situation.
So it’s the equivalent of being an author. You put the author’s name on the cover because you’re saying a book by this author is better than a book by a different author. And law firms put their partners in the name of the firm because they’re saying the firm with these lawyers is better than a firm with some other lawyers.
Also, they don’t change the name of the firm every time someone becomes partner. Typically, firms are named for the founding partners.
Really? Because ABA Model Rule 7.5(c) (adopted by most jurisdictions) explicitly authorizes the use of a trade name (such as one consumer bankruptcy firm here in Chicago called “Legal Helpers”), so long as it is not “misleading.” The rule does require disclosure by name of at least one attorney on any advertisement by a firm using a trade name. That is, I could form the “Chicago Law Group,” but my ads would have to say something to the effect of “Contents of this advertisement for legal services have been approved by Kimmy Gibbler, Esq.”
So 7.5(c) does not explain why most firms adopt the more conventional format of “Gibbler, Bricker, Oakminster & Associates.”
I think there are two considerations. First, clients know this format as denoting law firms, and perhaps even know that the firms that use trade names tend to be more on the “mill” side of the practice of law. Clients often choose firms, at least in part, aspirationally. And if you can’t get Cravath to probate your mom’s will, maybe you can get a fancy-sounding firm (which is also why the named partners always sound so WASPy).
Second, partners, at BigLaw or the local walkup, like the recognition. One of the allures of running your own firm or being a partner is getting to be the boss. Particularly so because as a solo or a partner, you have to make a substantial capital investment. Skadden Arps isn’t going to discard its famous name to gratify some partners. (When Thomas Dewey, namesake of the late Dewey & LeBoeuf, nee Dewey Ballantine (before merging with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae), his will forbade the firm from continuing to use his name. The firm implored good executor to allow them to continue to do so; the estate relented provided that “Dewey” always appear first.)
But at smaller, less famous firms, this is less of a consideration, and so partners want to see their names in gilded lettering on frosted entryway doors.
There are actually some firms that have names like “Patent Law Associates,” but tradition leads people to believe that a name like “Mancy, Cholglow & Pfasterschnifter” just sounds more dignified.
It’s worth noting in the 19th century most companies whether they be corporations or partnerships (and corporations were rarer in the 19th century, and many modern corporations trace their routes to partnerships) followed this format.
Examples: Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, R.R. Donnelly & Sons.
Then a lot of companies used to use the form: R.H. Macy & Co., J.P. Morgan & Co. (now J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.) Basically lawyers have maintained it while most new companies that aren’t law firms shy away from it, with older companies maintaining some reference to their original names in many cases (R.H. Macy & Co. renamed to “Macy’s.”)
It’s still very common in other professional service firms such as architects, chartered surveyors and ad agencies where the skills and reputation of the partners is all important.
Yeah, it’s just a matter of the law business being more conservative than other businesses. They bank on tradition and image.
Sears, Roebuck & Co.
This also happens on Wall Street: Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith
And in trades: Winsor & Newton art suppliers
And in advertising: Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn
And in accounting: Coopers & Lybrand, Ernst & Ernst, Whinney Murray, Deloitte Haskins & Sells, Price Waterhouse, Touche Ross
One of the other parts of Model Rule 7, cited by KG above, is the requirement that lawyers who practice under a trade or fictitious name do so at all times. You can’t name your practice “Jones & Sutcliffe, PA” but advertise as The Purple People Eaters. You’ve got to pick one or the other.
So, most lawyers opt for the traditional naming model because they like seeing their names on things.
There are quite a few firms that stretch this rule a bit. For example, here in Orlando there’s a big full-service firm named Kaufmann, Englett & Lynd, which advertises as “KEL Attorneys”.
It’s true. Some firms won’t even look at your resume if you don’t have an “er” at the end of your name.
“Nothing personal, Mr Nemo, we just don’t think you’d be a good fit here.”
Tradition. Historically reputable law firms don’t tend to be called “The Law Guys” so it’s a difficult step to take, cutting against potential clients’ expectations.
people on this thread said it was a rule, I don’t know (or didn’t know that). but its nice to not have to try and think of something creative. a little stress barrier might be reduced.
Am I nuts thinking it might have been a rule once upon a time like CHAMPERTY and BARRATRY</dramatic music>? ISTR it from my legal ethics class, but my legal ethics class was a bit of a disaster. (Cant be arsed to look it up myself, obv.)
The difference is that a law-firm LP is owned only by its partners – no non-lawyer has any ownership interest in it. It is essential to the legal profession that (1) a lawyer is an independent professional and cannot have a non-lawyer as his “boss” and (2) a lawyer’s fiduciary responsibility to a client must be undivided. You can’t have a non-lawyer telling you “do it this way” if “this way” might be against the rules of ethics or otherwise against your professional judgment; nor can you have anyone not in the attorney-client relationship telling you how to handle the client’s case. If you are house counsel for a corporation, the corporation is only your “client,” at least for professional-responsibility purposes, regardless of your name appearing on the payroll as an employee; if you’re ordered to do something unethical, or against your best legal judgment, you can ethically refuse or quit; just as, in similar circumstances, you can refuse to do what a client says, or withdraw from representation. But if a law firm were a corporation, then its lawyers might have a competing fiduciary responsibility to non-client stockholders, they might even have non-attorney MBAs above them telling them what to do in cases, and either is unacceptable.
Now, that is only tangentially related to why a law firm can’t name itself “Lawyers-R-Us” or something. The reason for that, my son, is tradition.
You reminded me of a law firm that has advertised incessantly on New Jersey radio for the past 20 years: These guys
In the early 90’s they were called “Levinson and Axelrod”
Then a few years later they were “Levinson, Axelrod, Wheaton, and Grayzel”
Another couple of years passed and then I would hear the radio announcer saying this mouthful: “Levinson, Axelrod, Wheaton, Grayzel, Caulfield, Marcolus, and Dunn”
Then a couple of more years passed and they started airing commercials where they admitted that their moniker had gotten a bit out of hand and they reverted to the original “Levinson and Axelrod”
IANAL, but there all sorts of other relationships possible here. I see things in the medical profession, and there are clear similarities.
The corporation can be a holding company, which employs the clerical and office staff and likely the legal aids (or medical ancillary staff as appropriate), and does all the grunt work. It may own or rent the office space and any equipment needed by the profession. (For radiology or pathology this is a big item.) The professionals - medical specialists, barristers, are not employees, but invoice the holding company for services rendered. They may (or might not) be shareholders in the service company. The British system of legal chambers works something like this. Sometimes you see senior or founding partners as shareholders, and the newer/junior partners don’t. Something that is not exactly popular with the younger professionals.
Many medical specialist partnerships used to be called by a list of the partners. Eventually many here (Australia) incorporated, and the name of the corporation was often taken from the old partnership name - often only taking the name of the senior partner. Now the person that gave their name to the partnership may be long retired or dead, but their name lives on. This occurred here in those specialities that became much more commercial in their operations (pathology, radiology) but the old partnership model still remains for the more niche specialities. I can see similar issues in the legal area, especially for the larger law firms.
(Here is Oz it gets very complex as only registered medicos are allowed to raise a fee on the nation’s medical insurance scheme, not corporations. So money shuffles all around.)
Champerty is still a rule, or at least there’s still a rule against it.
In general, I’d say they tend toward sounding more WASJy 