The Legal jungle doesn’t belong to the predators, it belongs to the adapters. When the going was good and deals were flying in thick and fast, the big players (affectionately known as the BigLaw in the U.S. Legal circles) were pretty much able to rule the roost and selectively pick through the headline making transactions. From box seats at US Open to million dollar bonuses, the BigLaw players were living the American Dream till the financial crisis and the resultant credit crunch served a rude wakeup call. With majority of the law firms fortunes being tied up to the ‘too big to fail’ financial institution, it was only a matter of time till the domino effect of the financial implosion wrecked up its first legal victims. Expansion plans were shelved, billing rates were halved, transactional practice started biting dust, massive layoffs and postponed recruitment news first made headlines and then steadily moved like an obituary column to the
inner pages. Faced with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the lawyers did what they have always done in face of adversity, they adapted.

The nightmare of Corporate America has turned out to be opportunity of a lifetime for Bankruptcy wing of firms like Weil, Gotshal & Manges. The Bankruptcy King, Harvey Miller, is presently billing at $950 per hour. The firm has billed more than $100 million in the Lehman debacle and $55 million (and counting) in the GM restructuring. This is not a temporary flip in an otherwise steady revenue generating practice. Even after a corporation comes out of Chapter 11, the restructuring exercise is likely to go on till the organization returns to its core strengths and regains its nucleus. The Bankruptcy wave has chosen its victims in a phase manner with the financial institutions being the first and obvious victims followed by the big manufacturers; the next wave will be led by retailers and small businesses thus ensuring a continuous revenue generation for the bankruptcy experts.