White-shoe firm

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In the United States, a white-shoe firm is a term used to describe prestigious professional services firms that have been traditionally associated with the upper-class elite who graduated from Ivy League colleges. The term is most often used to describe leading old-line law firms and Wall Street financial institutions, as well as accounting firms that are over a century old, typically in New York City and Boston. [1]

Contents

Former Wall Street attorney John Oller, author of White Shoe, credits Paul Drennan Cravath with creating the distinct model adopted by virtually all white-shoe law firms, the Cravath System, just after the turn of the 20th century, about 50 years before the phrase white-shoe firm came into use. [2]

Etymology

Senator J. Hamilton Lewis and attorney Joseph P. Tumulty pictured wearing "white bucks", 1917 LEWIS, JAMES HAMILTON, REP. FROM WASHINGTON, 1897-1899; SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS, 1913-1919, 1931-. LEFT, WITH TUMULTY.png
Senator J. Hamilton Lewis and attorney Joseph P. Tumulty pictured wearing "white bucks", 1917

The phrase derives from "white bucks", laced suede or buckskin (or Nubuck) derby shoes, usually with a red sole, long popular among the student body of Ivy League colleges. [3] A 1953 Esquire article, describing social strata at Yale University, explained that "White Shoe applies primarily to the socially ambitious and the socially smug types who affect a good deal of worldly sophistication, run, ride and drink in rather small cliques, and look in on the second halves of football games when the weather is good." [4] The Oxford English Dictionary cites the phrase "white-shoe college boys" in the J.D. Salinger novel Franny and Zooey (1957) as the first use of the term: [5] "Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day." [6] It also appears in a 1958 Fortune article by Spencer Klaw, which describes some firms as having "a predilection for young men who are listed in the Social Register. These firms are called 'white-shoe outfits', a term derived from the buckskin shoes that used to be part of the accepted uniform at certain eastern prep schools and colleges." [7]

Usage

The term originated in Ivy League colleges and originally reflected a stereotype of old-line firms that were populated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). The term historically had antisemitic connotations, as many of the New York firms known as white-shoe were considered inaccessible to Jewish lawyers until the 1960s. [5] [8] The phrase has since lost some of this connotation, but is still defined by Princeton University's WordNet as "denoting a company or law firm owned and run by members of the WASP elite who are generally conservative". [9] Most white-shoe firms also excluded Roman Catholics. [10] [11] [12] [13] A 2010 column in The Economist described the term as synonymous with "big, old, east-coast and fairly traditional." [14] In the 21st century, the term is sometimes used in a general sense to refer to firms that are perceived as prestigious or high-quality; it is also sometimes used in a derogatory manner to denote stodginess, elitism, or a lack of diversity. [5]

Examples

The following U.S. firms are often referred to as being white-shoe firms:

Accountancy

The current Big Four accounting firms and the former Big Eight auditors from which they merged:

The only former Big Eight firm not merged into one of the Big Four was Arthur Andersen, which went out of business in 2002 after the Enron scandal.

Banking

Traditional
Modern

Management consultancies

The Big Three (management consultancies), colloquially known as ‘’‘MBB’’’, consisting of the largest management consulting firms by revenue:

Law

Traditional
Modern

While the term "white-shoe" historically applied only to those law firms populated by WASPs, usage of the term has since been expanded to other top-rated prestigious firms. Many of these firms were founded as a direct result of the exclusionary tendencies of the original white-shoe firms, which provided limited opportunities for Jewish and Catholic lawyers, as well as other non-WASPs, and include:

Equivalent law firms outside the United States

Australia
Big Six: In 2012, three of these firms merged with overseas firms, and one other began operating in association with an overseas firm. As a consequence, it has proposed that the term is no longer applicable to the Australian legal profession, displaced by the concept of Global Elite law firms or International Business law firms. [59]
Brazil
Grandes Firmas: Pinheiro Neto Advogados: Mattos Filho Advogados : Machado Meyer Advogados: Tozzini Freire Advogados: Veirano Advogados
Canada
Seven Sisters
China (People's Republic)
Red Circle, coined by The Lawyer magazine in 2014. [60]
Japan
Big Four
South Africa
Big Five
Singapore
Big Four
United Kingdom (centered on the City of London)

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References

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  4. ↑ Chensvold, Christian. "Russell Lynes On The Shoe Hierarchy, Esquire 1953". Ivy Style. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 Chambliss, Elizabeth (2005). "THE SHOE STILL FITS". Legal Affairs. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
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