Reinventing The Law Business: Where Is The Legal Profession Heading? (Part 3)

Managing partner Bruce Stachenfeld notes that if you look at the most profitable law firms in recent years, a good chunk of them are "pure play" firms.

This is the third article in a four-part series dealing with my predictions for the future of different types of law firms as the legal profession changes. In this four-part series I will be writing about:

  • Branded Law Firms
  • Super Mega-Big Vereins
  • Pure-Play Law Firms
  • Regional Law Firms
  • Single-City Law Firms
  • Solo Practitioners and Firms with Less Than Ten Lawyers

Pure Play Law Firms

In the previous two articles I wrote about Branded Law Firms and Super Mega-Big Vereins. In this article I will discuss Pure Play Law Firms.

Okay, my firm is a pure play – the Pure Play in Real Estate Law – so I am biased. But so what? Just because I am biased doesn’t mean I am wrong in what I am about to say. And I will stick my neck out and say that the only thing out there that can reasonably compete with a Branded Major Law Firm is a pure play that is itself branded in its smaller pure play niche.

If you look at the most profitable law firms in recent years, a good chunk of them are pure plays or, if not “pure” pure plays, have an area of the law in which they are dramatically best in class, such as:

  • Wachtell Lipton
  • Quinn Emanuel
  • Susman Godfrey
  • Boies Schiller
  • Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy

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By the way, as an important aside, the concept of “pure play” is somewhat malleable. Occasionally a major law firm will have a specific practice in which it is the acknowledged leader and, in this sense, even though the firm as a whole is not really a “pure play,” the specific practice may end up being effectively the same thing. My thoughts here therefore apply to this situation and when I refer to a “pure play” in this article I mean either a stand-alone firm or one that is part of another law firm.

Further on this is our plan at Duval & Stachenfeld, which is to start with being the “pure play in real estate law,” but then over time add additional pure plays in other areas. Yes, there might be a contradiction in having two or more “pure plays,” but maybe that is just fine. We shall see.

In any case, more and more law firms are realizing this critical concept – that you simply have to be “the best of the best.” Number two is kind of useless. If your life or company is on the line, who would be pleased to have “the second best lawyer you could find!” Sorry – we have an internal saying – “Number Two Sucks.”

And it is true. Number One is the place where all the clients want to be and where all the top lawyers want to be. If a firm can attract the top talent and pay that talent very well, it becomes a virtuous cycle that feeds upon itself and gets stronger and stronger.

The point of a pure play is to set up the firm so that it not only attracts the best clients but also attracts the best lawyers too. Lawyers go to pure plays because they can service their clients best and build their careers best in them. However, the limitation of a pure play at the same time is its strength. If you aren’t practicing in the heart of the pure play you can be neglected.

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Due to this virtuous cycle, it is hard to beat a pure play for a career; however, a lawyer considering joining a pure play has to wonder what will happen during periods where the practice area of the pure play is not in vogue. Will that firm die?

And here it depends on the practice area and the strength of the firm’s culture. Most likely – and counter-intuitively – the pure plays will be just fine in downturns and may even thrive. The reason is that if the practice area is, say, real estate (the area that we focus on), when business turns down for real estate and our business (as one of the top players) slows up, then the odds are that it will turn down for our competition – right? If so, our pure play has little to fear from its biggest risk — namely, loss of talent, since that talent has nowhere to go during a downturn. And this is exactly what happened in the last real estate recession. So if a pure play has a strong culture holding it together, I would argue it has little to fear from a downturn in its business and this might even be a chance for it to expand, since its competition may be jettisoning talent in a downturn.

As far as top law students starting their careers, my advice is very simple – and obvious. If you are pretty sure that you want to build a career in the practice area that the pure play is working in, then there is no better place to go. You will get incredible training and, of equal importance, will make industry contacts that will be critical for a great career. The converse is also true; namely, if you don’t want to be in that practice area then you should, obviously, avoid that pure play. Finally, if you are picking a pure play over a branded law firm, you should confirm that the pure play you are picking has that “résumé cachet” so that if things don’t work out you are highly marketable.

For a lawyer with a major practice, the advice is also very simple and obvious. If you are practicing in the pure play’s practice area, then the odds are that this will be a great place for you to build higher and greater. And the converse. However, just as with all possible law firms you might join, you will need to make sure that there is a cultural fit and management is high-quality. As I mentioned in prior articles, if the firm is well run, then the culture will not change for you. If there is not a fit, then after a year or so of mutual misery, you will be leaving one way or another. As I said before, underestimate the cultural fit at your peril.

Finally, as far as a mid-level associate hoping to “make partner” or the junior partner finding out that partnership isn’t really much more than glorified associate-ness, my suspicion is that a pure play will be a (somewhat) better place. My reason is that a pure play is much easier to manage and is likely much smaller and also much more likely to want to retain its “talent” and not have the talent move to the competition. So I would think there would be a clearer path to partnership or non-partnership. My guess is that unlike in a larger more random firm you will be able to obtain a clearer assessment of your chances of a successful career. Once you learn that, the pathway is obvious – if your career is looking good at the pure play firm, then stick around. If not, then leave promptly, before you become entrapped or enslaved.

I will be continuing this discussion in the next article in this four-part series.

P.S. By the way, ATL permits me to mention here that Duval & Stachenfeld is eagerly seeking partner-level attorneys in areas that are synergistic with real estate, such as fund formation (in real estate), real estate capital markets, crowdfunding, EB-5, construction, real estate litigation, international cross-border transactions, hospitality, NYC economic incentives, etc. The synergies between our existing practices and the foregoing should be considerable. If this is of interest to anyone, please feel free to email me at thehedgehoglawyer@gmail.com, or to call me directly.

Earlier: Reinventing The Law Business: Where Is The Legal Profession Heading? (Part 1)
Reinventing The Law Business: Where Is The Legal Profession Heading? (Part 2)


Bruce Stachenfeld is the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, which is an approximately 70-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at thehedgehoglawyer@gmail.com.