By John Oller
In 1899 , when Paul Cravath became a partner in the prestigious Wall Street law firm co-founded by William H . Seward , Abraham Lincoln ’ s Secretary of State , the century wasn ’ t the only thing about to change . The standard paper clip had just been invented , and rubber bands had recently come into common use . Although that was progress in office supplies , the Seward firm , like many others , was stuck in old ways : There was no filing system , and the index was kept in an office boy ’ s head .
For all their supposed smarts , lawyers have often lagged in adapting to technological change . After the first elevator was installed in the Seward firm in 1885 , head partner Clarence Seward refused to use it . If he didn ’ t feel like climbing the two flights of stairs to his office , he just stayed home .
When the first telephones came to New York City in 1878 , lawyers considered it unprofessional to use them for business calls . Many doubted their privacy , perhaps because there was a single central exchange called “ Law ” for all lawyers in the boroughs . As late as 1911 , recalled John Foster Dulles , who joined the prestigious Sullivan & Cromwell firm that year , “ Some of the older partners felt that the only dignified way of communication between members of the legal profession was for them to write each other in Spencerian script , and to have the message thus expressed delivered by hand .”
Lawyers were also slow to accept the typewriter , commercialized in the 1870s . Until the mid-1880s , documents were drawn up in longhand by men at high slanting desks who stood or sat on tall stools . The best penman would write page after page and pass them down the line to
This 1911 Puck magazine cover shows a flying creature labeled “ Wickersham ” holding a large webbed fork in one hand and papers labeled “ Trust ,” “ Dissolution ,” “ Disintegration ” and “ Sherman Law ” in the other , descending on a fleeing crowd of Wall Street men . George Wickersham became known as “ the scourge of Wall Street ” for his aggressive prosecution of antitrust cases , angering some of the same companies he had once represented . scriveners , who laboriously copied them at long tables .
Stenographers who could take dictation were not used , because they were seen as intrusive . Letters circulated in their original form and were accompanied by earnest requests to return them as soon as possible . Only when the demands of the expanding legal profession finally became too much to handle in the old manner , around the turn of the century , did firms begin hiring female stenographers , secretaries and typists to replace male copyists .
Paul Cravath , then 37 and the Seward firm ’ s newest partner , saw a need for change . The first thing he did upon joining the firm was to begin a filing system , hiring a female librarian from Columbia University to run it . But it was really the entire law office system he wanted to revamp . He realized that in the 20th century , law firms had to become more like their most successful corporate clients : organized , efficient and capable of expanding .
For most of the 19th century , the typical law office was a solo practice or a two-man partnership with a few loosely affiliated clerks . Partners shared office space and expenses but not each other ’ s legal fees . Young men worked as clerks without pay for a few years , performing secretarial duties in exchange for a desk and access to the partners ’ library . Essentially free agents , they made their living by seeking out cases and clients of their own . Often they had not attended law school or taken any written bar examination before they were admitted to practice .
Law clerks received no systematic education or training at the firm ; instead , their learning came from reading law books , copying papers and observing the partners at work . Frequently the clerks were relatives or friends of the partners or the firm ’ s clients and no one expected them to contribute materially to the actual legal work of the firm .
But to Cravath , the whole arrangement lacked discipline . It was tainted by nepotism , created divided loyalties and produced mediocrity , not excellence . He decided there had to be a better way . He would hire the best law students , carefully train them , pay them to secure their allegiance , work them to the bone , promote them to partnership if they proved themselves and send them on their way if they did not . As partners they would collaborate and share profits . It would become known as the “ Cravath system ”— a set of business management principles still in use today by law firms and consulting companies .
The system was perfectly geared to the type of lawyer Cravath had become . By the turn of the century he was one of the growing cadre of corporation or “ office ” lawyers who helped create the foundations of modern American business . Working hand in glove with their corporate clients , visionary lawyers such as Cravath were devising and implementing legal strategies that would drive the business world throughout the 20th century . They headed what became known as “ white shoe ” firms , named for the white buck shoes worn by generations of Ivy League college men who , as members of the WASP elite , went on to run the leading law , banking and accounting firms on Wall Street .
From the early 19th century to the Gilded Age , which began in the 1870s , the elite members of the bar were those charismatic lawyers whose rhetorical skills enabled them to advocate persuasively in courtrooms . The classic example was the great orator and statesman Daniel Webster , who argued more than 150 cases before the US Supreme Court and won many early landmark decisions . Another familiar image was that of the prairie lawyer Abraham Lincoln , who rode the circuit around the little towns of Illinois , making folksy appeals to juries in disputes over cows , hogs , smalltime commercial transactions and the occasional criminal case . According to legend , he almost always won .
At least through the Civil War , businessmen sought out lawyers only when they were ready to fight in court . Clients gave little thought to using lawyers as preventive measures . But the growing industrialization and urbanization of the country in the post – Civil War era , and the increasing number , complexity and sheer size of corporations , called for a new kind of lawyer — a practical man of
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