Big Law (Ossei-Owusu)
Faculty
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| Shaun Ossei-Owusu Presidential Assistant Professor of Law oss@law.upenn.edu |
Additional Information
Satisfies Senior Writing RequirementNo
Class meets in person.
Course Continuity
Students are encouraged to stay home if you are ill or experience flu-like symptoms. If you miss a class for any reason, it is still your responsibility to make up the work missed.
I offer the following to students who miss class due to illness:
- Class sessions are regularly recorded. I will make these recordings routinely available on the course site to everyone in the class.
- If you are absent, due to illness or some other unavoidable circumstance, email me and I can ask for volunteers among your classmates to share their notes with you.
- I will make PowerPoint slides or other class materials routinely available on the course site to everyone in the class.
- When you are better, please make an appointment to meet with me and I will review/answer questions about what you missed.
Meeting Times/Location
F 11:00AM - 2:00PM
Tanenbaum Hall 320
Category
Seminar
Credits
1.5
Legal education is known for its traditional focus on helping students think like lawyers, understand legal doctrines, and build the skills necessary to practice law. It is relatively rare for legal education to focus exclusively on the historical development, social dynamics, and economic pressures of a key sector of the legal profession: Big Law. This trope refers to some of the country’s most prestigious, profitable, and largest law firms. At this institution and many others, it is the primary landing spot for most graduates.
At many schools, the reasons for this relative omission are quite understandable. They include but are not limited to: lack of scholarly expertise in this domain, student preference for doctrinal classes, and a longstanding divide between theory and practice. But this inattention comes with costs. For example, there is a longstanding critique of young lawyers’ unpreparedness for Big Law that focuses on their legal skills, suboptimal understanding of the business of law, unclear understanding of expectations from senior colleagues, and struggles with strategically networking with partners. These issues can lead to stunted professional development (as lawyers learn about cultural environments while on the job), burnout, and attrition.
This seminar seeks to provide a corrective for students planning on entering Big Law (and insights for students who are curious about this area of practice). We will take an interdisciplinary approach. We’ll cover historical topics such as the emergence of these firms at the turn of the 20th century and their exclusion of women and racial and religious minorities immediately afterward. We’ll discuss the various crises and shuttering of law firms in the last fifty years that have rejiggered Big Law. We will also touch on various economic issues such as billable hours requirements, financial pressures facing law firms, eat-what-you-kill vs. lockstep compensation, the proliferation of contract attorneys, and other forms of outsourcing. Sociological topics will get airplay, too. Some themes include office politics, work-life balance, and glass ceilings facing historically underrepresented groups. My hope is that students who plan on working in Big Law will leave the seminar with a strategic advantage compared to their peers and be best positioned to thrive in that space. I hope that students who do not intend to work in this field leave with a good grasp of the contours of this area of practice.
This is a year-long semester that meets five times in the fall (November 1, 8, 15, 22, and December 6th) and eight times in the spring (Jan 24, Jan 31, Feb. 7, Feb. 21, March 7, March 21, April 4, April 11). There is no final exam. Evaluation will be based on class participation and short response papers. Since this class meets over a year, prospective students are encouraged to think carefully about their willingness to read at least 100 pages per class and substantively engage the materials.