There have been several high-profile dissolutions of law firms over the last decade. With those dissolutions has also come litigation over whether those law firms can claim any ownership to their “unfinished business”—work that the firms were once hired to do that is being brought to new firms by the dissolved firms’ former partners.

In a long-awaited decision, the California Supreme Court has unanimously decided that a dissolved law firm has no property interest in fees earned by their former partners working for new firms on hourly fee matters.