Corporate Law
BigLaw Aided ‘March of Dunces’ That Destroyed Economy, Yale Law Grad Says
Posted Apr 9, 2009, 03:14 pm CST
By Martha Neil
Amidst all the fingerpointing over the dismal state of the economy, excessive executive bonuses and the billable hour, the obvious hasn't yet been stated, a well-known Yale law grad writes.
"The whole system is warped," says Elizabeth Wurtzel in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.
In addition to the 12 years of wealth that have been lost in a matter of months in the stock market's plummet, millions of hours of work by investment bankers and the lawyers who supported them in their fundamentally flawed endeavors have been wasted, she states. Rather than working the killer hours for which Wall Street is known, "corporate lawyers could have been sunning in St. Bart's and ended up with the exact same result, plus a tan."
Now, unless the all-out emergency-room-like work ethic that treats corporate deals with the same seriousness as the fate of nations is reevaluated, the same "march of dunces" likely will continue in the future, she says.
Wurtzel, who wrote Prozac Nation before graduating from Yale Law School, works at Boies Schiller & Flexner, writes the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, adding "we couldn’t help fall for the brazen chutzpah of the piece."
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: "Author Blames Yale and ‘Having a Good Time’ for Failing NY Bar"
ABAJournal.com: "‘Prozac Nation’ Author Soon to Be a Yale Law Grad"
Updated at 5:45 p.m. to reflect that Wurtzel does not appear to be admitted in New York.
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