Are WASP law firms finally dead?

Harvard law professor Noah Feldman had some very nice things to say about WASPs (in case you weren't aware, that stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and their contribution to diversity in a recent New York Times article. So nice, in fact, that I wondered if I missed something.

Feldman starts off by noting that if Elena Kagan is confirmed as a US Supreme Court Justice, the court will consist of six Catholics and three Jews - a dramatic departure from as recently as five years ago when the court "had a plurality of white Protestants". The change, he adds, "is a cause for celebration" in that "no one much cares about the nominee's religion".

And who should get credit for this progress? "The very Protestant elite that founded and long dominated our nation's institutions of higher education and government, including the Supreme Court," says Feldman.

Though he acknowledges that the WASP elite excluded other ethnic and religious groups in history (particularly Jews), he argues that "anti-Semitism in America never had anything like the purchase it had in Europe." And once "the ideas of meritocratic inclusion gained a foothold, progress was remarkably steady and smooth."

Feldman's article didn't talk about law firms specifically, but it brought home to me how the white-shoe, WASP firms are now shells of their former selves. It wasn't that long ago that certain firms like Cravath Swaine & Moore, Sullivan & Cromwell and Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy were known as high-WASP shrines, while firms like Weil Gotshal & Manges and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison had a distinctly Jewish reputation. Now, all three of those WASP icons, plus others, are headed by Jewish partners - Sullivan chair Joseph Shenker is even a former rabbi.

WASP institutions eventually put out the welcome mat to other groups, says Feldman, because the idea of fairness is central to the Protestant ethic.

From "the anti-aristocratic ideals of the Constitution, which banned titles of nobility and thus encouraged success based on merit," fair play is a running theme of WASP culture, argues Feldman. Acceptance of non-WASPs into "societies, clubs, and colleges," adds Feldman, "was not just a case of an elite looking outside itself for rejuvenation; the inclusiveness of the last 50 years has been the product of sincerely held ideas put into action".

Opening the gates because of "sincerely held ideas"? Really? In the law firm context, at least, I'd argue that firms let in non-WASPs mainly for economic survival. In an excellent article in The New York Law Journal that looks at the history of Jewish law firms, Eli Wald, a professor at the University of Denver College of Law, notes that Jewish firms flourished because they carved out niches in litigation, bankruptcy, and real estate - "practices that the white-shoe firms eschewed as undignified." As the market changed, old-line firms scrambled to develop those areas; hence, barriers to non-WASP lawyers fell.

Competition for raw talent as another contributing factor to the demise of the WASP law firm. The legal profession is credentials obsessed. As pedigree dropped in importance, law firms placed greater weight on academic achievement. Feldman does not disagree. "Felix Frankfurter was hired by a Wall Street firm previously closed to Jews because he was first in his class," Feldman tells me.

Initially, I thought Feldman's article was way too charitable in crediting the ruling class for the triumph of meritocracy. I wondered why he's singing the praise of WASPs when his own father, had he been a lawyer, probably would have been excluded from those white-shoe firms. After all, Elena Kagan's father was a Yale Law School graduate who specialised in representing tenants in apartment sales - not exactly a highbrow field.

But when you scratch deeper into Feldman's article, it's also clear he's celebrating the demise of WASPdom. In fact, Feldman congratulates WASPs for being gracious enough to make themselves extinct.

Feldman slips in another subversive note at the end: WASP fashion, a longtime symbol of Wall Street and the good life, has actually been a Jewish enterprise.

The style now generically called 'prep' - originally known as 'Ivy League' - was long purveyed by Jewish and immigrant haberdashers and then taken global by Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Rueben Lifshitz). But until the Protestant-dominated Ivy League began to open up, the wearers of the style were restricted to that elite subculture.

So today, as you dart around your firm in your classic work attire, take a moment to remember the WASP lawyers that used to haunt those same halls. Those crisp cotton shirts and nicely tailored suits are pretty much all that's left of that legacy.

The Careerist is a blog by American Lawyer Media.