{"id":166779,"date":"2026-11-04T16:52:03","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T00:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/11\/04\/the-biglaw-firm-that-rode-the-dot-com-wave-all-the-way-to-the-bottom\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T16:52:03","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T00:52:03","slug":"the-biglaw-firm-that-rode-the-dot-com-wave-all-the-way-to-the-bottom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2026\/11\/04\/the-biglaw-firm-that-rode-the-dot-com-wave-all-the-way-to-the-bottom\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biglaw Firm That Rode The Dot-Com Wave All The Way To The Bottom"},"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>Which nearly 80-year-old San Francisco firm became the hottest law shop of the dot-com boom, handling hundreds of tech IPOs and sometimes even taking equity stakes in the startups it represented instead of cash, it nearly doubled in size, to roughly 900 lawyers, in just a few years. But when the bubble burst things came crashing down \u2014 its tech clients cratered (some into bankruptcy), a star chairman led a wave of partners out the door, and a last-ditch merger (with Morgan Lewis) collapsed. In January 2003, the partners voted to shut it down, throwing some 1,100 people out of work across 14 offices \u2014 the defining law firm casualty of the dot-com crash.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: Founded in 1926, it was long one of San Francisco\u2019s most prestigious firms. Its ousted chairman, Tower Snow, decamped to Clifford Chance with a group of partners. A Slate headline summed up its demise as \u201cThe Dot-Firm\u2019s Dot-Bomb.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>See the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/11\/the-biglaw-firm-that-rode-the-dot-com-wave-all-the-way-to-the-bottom\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Biglaw Firm That Rode The Dot-Com Wave All The Way To The Bottom<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n<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>Which nearly 80-year-old San Francisco firm became the hottest law shop of the dot-com boom, handling hundreds of tech IPOs and sometimes even taking equity stakes in the startups it represented instead of cash, it nearly doubled in size, to roughly 900 lawyers, in just a few years. But when the bubble burst things came crashing down \u2014 its tech clients cratered (some into bankruptcy), a star chairman led a wave of partners out the door, and a last-ditch merger (with Morgan Lewis) collapsed. In January 2003, the partners voted to shut it down, throwing some 1,100 people out of work across 14 offices \u2014 the defining law firm casualty of the dot-com crash.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hint: Founded in 1926, it was long one of San Francisco\u2019s most prestigious firms. Its ousted chairman, Tower Snow, decamped to Clifford Chance with a group of partners. A Slate headline summed up its demise as \u201cThe Dot-Firm\u2019s Dot-Bomb.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>See the answer on the next page.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2026\/11\/the-biglaw-firm-that-rode-the-dot-com-wave-all-the-way-to-the-bottom\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Biglaw Firm That Rode The Dot-Com Wave All The Way To The Bottom<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed. Note: Welcome to our daily feature Trivia Question of the Day! Which nearly 80-year-old San Francisco firm became the hottest law shop of the dot-com boom, handling hundreds of tech IPOs and sometimes even taking equity stakes in the startups it represented instead of cash, it nearly doubled in size, to roughly 900 lawyers, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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-166779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166779","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=166779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}