New Delhi, Sept. 29 -- American law firms were once small affairs, often employing fewer than five lawyers. Then in 1903 an enterprising advocate named Paul Cravath decided his shop would grow larger. He sought to hire the brightest minds straight from law school, push them hard for several years and make the best of them partners in the firm. The result, wrote Wayne Karl Hobson, a historian, some 70 years later, was droves of "anonymous organisation men" who moved on "only if the firm informed them it could not advance them". Nearly every American law firm would adopt the "Cravath system".

Now the system is buckling-and the partnership model with it. Big-name transfers have been making the world of white-shoe law look like a sports leag...