Ensconced as one of Los Angeles’ top attorneys,
L. Rachel Helyar has come as close as possible
to one of the Middle East’s most unpredictable
battlegrounds – Turkmenistan – where she helped
resolve a seemingly impenetrable conflict
between a heavy-handed dictator and a Western
oil company. For Helyar, dealing with change,
whether it is in the affairs of the world or
those of her own adolescent children, is part of
daily life as a California attorney. Helyar has
learned that nothing stays the same for very
long.
It is a theme that echoes loudly in the world of
corporate law, where having a top lawyer can
mean the difference between survival and
bankruptcy. Where one lawsuit can reap millions
of dollars, or foul a corporation’s reputation
for years.
Helyar has become one of the bright faces in
California’s League of Justice, which itself has
seen enormous change over the past two decades.
Once the enclave for small to mid-sized firms
with a West Coast bent, the law offices of the
Golden State – home to more than 210,000
attorneys - have had to make way for some of the
industry’s biggest legal guns. Over the past
several decades, Eastern firms such as
Cleveland’s Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and New
York’s Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom have
built offices in California and compete
alongside Helyar’s Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer &
Feld LLP and Bruce Jeffer’s Jeffer, Mangels,
Butler & Marmaro LLP. Both Helyar’s and Jeffer’s
firms are located in Los Angeles.
“Top-tier” can also mean “top-priced,” and
accessible to only those companies with pockets
deep enough to afford the layers of
specialization offered by the big firms, but the
benefits mean there are lawyers available such
as Helyar and others who can handle issues as
difficult as the whims of Middle Eastern oil
dictators.
Still, the majority of firms in California are
small, independent offices The percentage of
attorneys choosing to work for themselves has
jumped dramatically – to 62 percent of the bar’s
membership from 43 percent just five years ago,
according to a survey by the State Bar of
California. Some companies such as Allen Ruby’s
San Jose firm, Ruby & Schofield, do not have the
banks of young lawyers willing to sift through
thousands of pages of documents. Instead, they
offer personalized service – face-to-face
contact between attorney and client, often at a
lower fee. The financial difference can be a
huge break from the big firms, which bill as
much as $500 an hour for their time.
California is a reflection of major shifts in the world economy, as
U.S. businesses seek profits in Asia and other
parts of the world, causing some California
lawyers to look beyond national boundaries for
business. The state also mirrors – some might
say leads – the changing ethnic balance of the
American workforce. The legal profession is
characteristic of these historic changes. In the
past 15 years, the percentage of white lawyers
has dropped from more than 90 percent to less
than 85 percent, while lawyers of other
heritages have surged. Other societal trends,
too, show up in the profession’s makeup; the
percentage of older attorneys has more than
doubled, as has the percentage of gay and
lesbian lawyers.
Law, with its hours of legal research, is
enormously time-consuming, and lawyers who are
also want to share time with their families feel
the crunch of balancing work and home life.
Overall, lawyers have cut back dramatically in
the length of their workweek, with the
percentage putting in 60 or more hours at the
office dropping by two thirds since 2001.
As female attorneys continue to make up a larger
proportion of the legal workforce – up from 26
percent to 34 percent in 15 years – many of them
are making the decision to leave the big firms
in favor of smaller ones, or for government
jobs, or to leave time for caregiving.
By Scott Williams
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October 2007 Issue
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