The Death of a Law Firm: Must We Mourn?

There was a talk show on the radio recently discussing the pending collapse of Dewey & LeBoeuf, an enormous law firm in New York with branches in 25 countries which had been successfully extracting money from its customers for many years but was now teetering on the thin edge of financial ruin. Its chairman, now former chairman, is the focus of a criminal investigation, and the partners' swollen pay packets have been reduced, in many cases, from obscene to excessive.
Here's what happened: When you are a very large, rich law firm (I use the second person singular advisedly since the Supreme Court has assured us that large associations of venal predators such as huge law firms and other multi-national corporations are people just like you and me). As I was saying, when you are a very large, rich law firm vacuuming money out of anybody who drifts into your sphere of influence, you start to think not only that you actually deserve all that money, but also that the inflow will continue forever; that the well will never run dry. There will always be another mark. So you sniff around the legal hatcheries like Harvard and Yale and entice the more promising cockerels into your nest with the promise of a million or two per annum plus perks and benes and a percentage of whatever they can bring in, and before you know it you have 300 generously compensated partners and a thousand or so lesser beings with houses in the Hamptons.
Then one tragic day the accounting team (a large person such as yourself does not limp along with An Accountant like the rest of us persons, but rather assembles a team with a specialist for any imaginable contingency met by multi-national persons requiring expert sleight of hand) The accounting team stands up in front of the 300 Armani suits and nervously explains that last month's take fell $50 million short of expectations, the rent for the office space housing the head office, 3 floors on Central Park West, is overdue, the electric bill hasn't been paid since Christmas, and the bank is making mean remarks about any further overdrafts.
The room falls silent. The sweaty spokesman scoops up his notes and discreetly slips out the back with the rest of the team, none of them inclined to linger. The meeting continues. Other business is discussed, but nobody is paying attention. A few are making lists of other firms that might take them in.
The next morning three hotshots who have been repeatedly courted by other firms tender their resignations. By quitting time 2 more have found other opportunities. By the following week 25 more defections have been realized and the news has leaked to the lesser beings, the secretaries and paralegals and such as well as the lesser lawyers, the drones who are not yet partners. The exodus spreads.
Soon the ranks of the partners have dwindled from 300 to little more than 200. The news has leaked into the street and the media have taken an interest. And that is how National Public Radio got hold of it and why they were discussing the sad news with two or three knowledgeable commentators. There were, of course, differences of opinion on this point or that, but there seemed to be general agreement that this was a Bad Thing.
I have puzzled over this for a week now and have been unable to think of a single reason why this would be a Bad Thing. All those paralegals and sub-lawyers should be able to find a billet with little difficulty. Legal secretaries, by all accounts are in hot demand. The landlord will have no difficulty filling those three floors on Central Park West with somebody who is solvent. All that remains is the rapidly dwindling population of partners who have been taking in no less than $2 million per annum for the duration of their tenure.
Are we asked to make sympathetic clucks over the financial misfortune of people who too k in more last year than most of us will see in our lifetimes? Are we to feel sorry for these sleek, perfectly coiffed beings who may have trouble making the mortgage payments on their third house in Vail? Or who will be forced to drive the same Mercedes two years running?

Really?