Very rarely has a corporate lawyer been so celebrated during life, but judging the legacy of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom pioneer Joseph Flom in the wake of his death last week, his career still looks hugely instructive for the global legal market he helped to create.
Perhaps most revealing is a detailed profile of Flom from 1989 penned by The American Lawyer founder Steven Brill, which charts his achievement in pushing Skadden from outsider to the firm that arguably eclipsed its establishment rivals. From an upstart practice founded in 1948 – Flom was the firm’s first associate – Skadden seized a huge opportunity when Manhattan’s legal elite turned its nose up at the emerging field of proxy fights and hostile takeovers, which evolved through the 1960s and came to transfix Wall Street in the 1980s.
