CONFLICTS-OF-INTEREST IN AMERICAN BUSINESS LAW FIRMS - AN ORGANIZATIONAL APPROACH

A study of a major East Coast business law firm with offices in several cities in the United States provides a look at how the legal profession regulates itself. By using different methods (statistical measures, prominence scores, informal surveys of control systems) to examine separately the procedures (control routines, Chinese wall, self-disqualification) for settling conflicts of interest, several limits are brought to light. Thought is given to ways of regulating markets through instituted regulators and through actors themselves.