Thorstein Veblen: The Man Behind Conspicuous Consumption

May I welcome you to the first of a few Adam Smith, Esq. portraits of notable economists?  My source for all in this series is the redoubtable Capitalism and its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI (John Cassidy, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux: New... read more +

Summer Reading List

In keeping with our custom at Adam Smith, Esq. of publishing a summertime diversion in the form of a selective list of what we’ve been reading lately, herewith the 2023 installment: two novels and two nonfiction volumes that have  had a  prominent places on our...

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The Maroons & The Grays: The Next Chapter

It has been four years since we initially published our series laying out a law firm market segmentation model we called the “Maroons & The Grays,”[1] and four years on is none too soon for an update. No model is, or should be, static, and as we have worked with...

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July 4th

America! America! God mend thine every flaw, confirm they soul in self-control, thy liberty in law. O Beautiful for Spacious Skies, Materna,  composed by Katharine Lee Bates, 1893 (second verse, third and fourth stanzas)

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Our Brave New Lateral World

Something that feels structurally different seems to have developed in the lateral market. The ambition of this essay is to describe what we think it is, why it has developed, and what it portends for the future of BigLaw.  Plus, with any luck, some ideas or at least...

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