At the U.S. Supreme Court, the dominance of veteran advocates and their law firms only continues to grow.
In the term that ended in June, the justices decided a meager 67 argued cases, less than half the caseload they handled in 1990. Three firms argued seven cases each, and two argued in six—meaning that just five firms fielded lawyers in half of the court’s cases. “That is truly remarkable,” says Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus of these numbers. Lazarus has written extensively about the development of the elite Supreme Court bar. In 2009, he went so far as to call it “docket capture” of the high court by a small group of lawyers who tend to file, and win, business cases.
