U.S. law firm
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A human organisation even less effable than the magic circle law firm, a U.S. law firm, and particularly a senior partner of a U.S. law firm, occupies a place in the international financial services pantheon akin to a demi-god.
The legal department of each investment bank will be captive of one U.S. law firm, who will, by parachute drop, supply each successive general counsel to that “client” This will not go unnoticed amongst aspiring, but passed-over, employees of that legal department, but there is little they can do. Their U.S. law firm overlords may even be invited to provide performance appraisals of those aspiring employees, which cements the master-slave relationship that they have managed to impose.
Indeed, New York law is so baroque, so ineffable, so impervious to the efforts of outsiders to understand it that only a U.S. law firm — and only one of a certain standing — can advise on it. Those poor little minnows of the magic circle have tried for years to get a piece of this juicy market for advisory fees — by organically growing local US capacity and even merging with existing U.S. law firms to bolster credibility — but it has been, more or less, to no avail. Indeed, some U.S law firms have found to their horror that associating with an global firm headquartered elsewhere has dented their local credibility.