{"id":162563,"date":"2026-09-10T15:02:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T23:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/10\/once-the-second-biggest-firm-in-america-then-the-first-to-blow-up\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T15:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T23:02:45","slug":"once-the-second-biggest-firm-in-america-then-the-first-to-blow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/09\/10\/once-the-second-biggest-firm-in-america-then-the-first-to-blow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Once The Second-Biggest Firm In America, Then The First To Blow Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span>Ed. Note:<\/span> Welcome to our daily feature <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/tag\/trivia-question-of-the-day\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Once the second-largest law firm in the country, which New York powerhouse Biglaw firm expanded by poaching rainmakers from rivals, paying partners on what business they brought in rather than seniority, stacking its letterhead with former U.S. senators, and borrowing heavily to expand into some two dozen cities before collapsing in late 1987 (widely considered the first Biglaw giant to collapse outright)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: Among its rainmaker hires were former senators Paul Laxalt and Russell Long; among its clients, a brash young New York developer named Donald Trump. <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/once-the-second-biggest-firm-in-america-then-the-first-to-blow-up\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Once The Second-Biggest Firm In America, Then The First To Blow Up<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-single__featured-image post-single__featured-image--medium alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/11\/GettyImages-871765034-300x300.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p><em>Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/tag\/trivia-question-of-the-day\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trivia Question of the Day!<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Once the second-largest law firm in the country, which New York powerhouse Biglaw firm expanded by poaching rainmakers from rivals, paying partners on what business they brought in rather than seniority, stacking its letterhead with former U.S. senators, and borrowing heavily to expand into some two dozen cities before collapsing in late 1987 (widely considered the first Biglaw giant to collapse outright)?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: Among its rainmaker hires were former senators Paul Laxalt and Russell Long; among its clients, a brash young New York developer named Donald Trump. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>1<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/once-the-second-biggest-firm-in-america-then-the-first-to-blow-up\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/09\/once-the-second-biggest-firm-in-america-then-the-first-to-blow-up\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Next \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Once the second-largest law firm in the country, which New York powerhouse Biglaw firm expanded by poaching rainmakers from rivals, paying partners on what business they brought in rather than seniority, stacking its letterhead with former U.S. senators, and borrowing heavily to expand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}