CONFLICTS-OF-INTEREST IN AMERICAN BUSINES S LAW FIRMS - AN ORGANIZATIONAL APPROACH

A study of a major East Coast business law firm with offices in severa l cities in the United States provides a look at how the legal profess ion regulates itself. By using different methods (statistical measures , prominence scores, informal surveys of control systems) to examine s eparately the procedures (control routines, Chinese wall, self-disqual ification) for settling conflicts of interest, several limits are brou ght to light. Thought is given to ways of regulating markets through i nstituted regulators and through actors themselves.