It is ironic that many clients and lawyers now condemn hourly billing. Starting in the 1950s, both groups demanded the switch from fixed-fee billing to hourly billing. This article explains why. Using a new economic model, Professors Cloud and Shepherd show that societal changes, particularly the expansion of pretrial discovery in the 1938 Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, led inevitably to hou...

Lawyers are targeting problems with under-treatment of pain for elderly and chronically ill patients. Learn some tactics for dealing with the legal issue.

Thousands of incidents each year are managed by law firms. Victim firms call a hotline and delegate incident response to external counsel without preexisting relationship. We examine how this model breaks from convention outline questions for future research.

The relations between physicians and lawyers have deteriorated rapidly over the past several decades, most particulary since the early 70s when the perception that a medical malpractice crisis existed in America became widespread. Some believe that the factors dividing the two professions are linked (1) to professional jealousy, (2) to sometimes conflicting economic interests, or (3) to difficu...

who inspired this project during my stay at the University of Alberta. Namrata Malhotra and Marc Ventresca have provided helpful criticism and comments. Especially, I am indebted to my supervisors Laura Empson and Tim Morris for their valuable advice and guidance throughout the project. ABSTRACT Organisational fields represent a central concept in institutional theory and discussions of profess...