The good eggs need clout

Lessons learned from the whole Lewis Brisbois & Barber Ranen mess

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably saw the crazy story that emerged last weekend about a pair of law firm partners caught saying all sorts of terrible, vile things in their work emails. If you missed it, I would highly recommend checking out this overview from the LA Times, and David Lat’s well-written, comprehensive summary of everything that happened.

Over the past week, the scandal generated a ton of reactions across social media. I won’t rehash them here. Instead I’ll focus this article on the underlying dynamics of the legal industry that were revealed. I gave a quick preview on social media earlier this week:

Rule 1: Law firms will go to great lengths to protect and cater to their rainmakers

Rainmakers get special treatment. That’s not exactly news.¹ In fact, it’s a phenomenon that I’ve written about extensively in the past (see here and here). But this whole Lewis Brisbois / Barber Ranen drama takes it even farther. Because rainmakers don’t just receive economic rewards. They get to do whatever they want. Which happens to include saying some absolutely terrible, vile things about other people.

Lewis Brisbois claims that they discovered these emails *only after* reviewing them upon Barber and Ranen’s departure. I don’t believe it. Certainly *some* of the firm’s senior partners were aware. After all, the comments were shared via work email—which shows a level of comfort Barber and Ranen had that this type of behavior was acceptable by others at the firm.²

I have a theory