Regional, Interregional, and International Structures of Southern Legal Services

The rapid growth of legal services has been accompanied by a mounting complexity in their geographic structure. Large law firms play a disproportionate role in the evolving corporate organization of this sector, offering specialized expertise to clients located in a wide variety of sectors and places. This paper opens with a brief review of the forces that have contributed to their growth. Next it turns to the spatial distribution of employment of legal services in the South, including the distribution of corporate headquarters, major areas of practice, and the racial and gender composition of employment. It also examines interstate locations of branch offices, including non-Southern extensions of Southern firms and those headquartered outside of the South but with operations within the region. Finally, it summarizes the international employment of attorneys working for Southern legal services firms.