Mayer Brown was the paradigmatic Chicago firm. Thanks to its ever-accumulating pile of clients, money, and influence, Mayer Brown could afford to be exceptionally generous to its lawyers, and it took great pride in nurturing them. For decades, its nickname was “Mother Mayer.” Every morning at 9 a.m., the most senior partners mixed with the lowliest associates over donuts and Danish in an eighteenth-floor coffee room. At night, they would huddle at Binyon’s, a nearby restaurant, to dine on the firm’s tab. “It would envelop you, take care of you forever,” says a former partner. Admission to the partnership after seven years was the natural order of the universe as Mayer Brown understood it. “The ground rules were: Do legal work of a high quality. Work reasonably hard, and keep your nose clean. Don’t make stupid mistakes,” says Alan Salpeter, who joined the firm in 1972 and became one of its highest-billing partners. “I was not exceptional.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/113941/big-law-firms-trouble-when-money-dries

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3568523&forum_id=2#32953341)