{"id":166525,"date":"2026-10-30T15:26:41","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T23:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/30\/the-first-biglaw-giant-to-fall-in-the-great-recession\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T15:26:41","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T23:26:41","slug":"the-first-biglaw-giant-to-fall-in-the-great-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/10\/30\/the-first-biglaw-giant-to-fall-in-the-great-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Biglaw Giant To Fall In The Great Recession"},"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>Founded in San Francisco in 1890, this was one of the oldest and most prestigious law firms on the West Coast \u2014 innovative enough to launch the first law firm website, back in 1994. But in September 2008, as the financial crisis peaked, a rival poached 15 of its intellectual-property partners in a single swoop, which torpedoed the merger talks that were supposed to save it. The exodus snowballed, and within weeks the partnership of which firm voted to dissolve, making it the first Biglaw giant to fall in the Great Recession?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: The departing IP group jumped to Covington &amp; Burling, which was expanding into Silicon Valley, and the merger that collapsed in its wake was with Mayer Brown. The firm confirmed its dissolution just days after Lehman Brothers went under.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>See the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/10\/the-first-biglaw-giant-to-fall-in-the-great-recession\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The First Biglaw Giant To Fall In The Great Recession<\/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=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/07\/decline-fall-collapse-stock-market-recession-chart-graph-300x225.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>Founded in San Francisco in 1890, this was one of the oldest and most prestigious law firms on the West Coast \u2014 innovative enough to launch the first law firm website, back in 1994. But in September 2008, as the financial crisis peaked, a rival poached 15 of its intellectual-property partners in a single swoop, which torpedoed the merger talks that were supposed to save it. The exodus snowballed, and within weeks the partnership of which firm voted to dissolve, making it the first Biglaw giant to fall in the Great Recession?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: The departing IP group jumped to Covington &amp; Burling, which was expanding into Silicon Valley, and the merger that collapsed in its wake was with Mayer Brown. The firm confirmed its dissolution just days after Lehman Brothers went under.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>See the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>1<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/10\/the-first-biglaw-giant-to-fall-in-the-great-recession\/2\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/10\/the-first-biglaw-giant-to-fall-in-the-great-recession\/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! Founded in San Francisco in 1890, this was one of the oldest and most prestigious law firms on the West Coast \u2014 innovative enough to launch the first law firm website, back in 1994. But in September 2008, as the financial crisis peaked, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":166526,"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-166525","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\/166525","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=166525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}