The blog post of the year

It's only July, and MoneyLaw strongly prefers football and baseball to hockey, but the triumphant lifting of the Stanley Cup sets the right tone. Bill Henderson has written what I consider to be the most important blog post of the year: How the "Cravath system" created the bi-modal distribution. Indeed, if there is a more compelling read among recent publications for those who care about law students, legal education, and the legal profession, I do not know it.


Here are the lessons I take away from Bill's powerful post and his even more devastating working paper:

1. The love of credentials has become the root of all evil.


2. The current system is unsustainable, and many firms that persist in the teeth of client discontent and an eroding economy will be — and will deserve to be — crushed and melted.


3. There is a way out that enables firms, lawyers, and law schools to maximize human capital in law.

Whether the relevant players will have the vision and courage to get past the "Cravath system," before that obsolete model swallows them alive, will be the most important MoneyLaw move that legal education and the legal profession as a whole can make in the foreseeable future.