This was an amazing story. Lots of professional services firms get too wrapped up in profit sharing and infighting when they get too big. Look at Accenture and Arthur Andersen breaking up.

You have a lot of good points on the nature of law. If you're selling billable hours, it is very hard to scale up. Profitability is still per partner. You can find ways to charge more money, or increase the worker bees per partner, but that's about it. Some firms find a way to leverage the connections between partners (think McKinsey, but not a law firm) but that's rare.

The partners and worker bees can leave at any time leaving behind very little IP.

This is why these firms rarely trade at high multiples, and frequently stagnate post-IPO.