The Last Partnership: How Wall Street and the Big Four Cashed Out—and Why Big Law Is Next

Bommarito, M. J. (2026). The Last Partnership: How Wall Street and the Big Four Cashed Out—and Why Big Law Is Next. Self-published. Draft manuscript (July 2026) — work in progress. Not for citation. Comments welcome. For a century, the world's most powerful professional firms — the Wall Street banks, the giant accounting houses, the great law firms — were owned by the people who worked in them. That world is ending, and it has ended before. In 1969 a scrappy research boutique defied the New York Stock Exchange and put a price on Wall Street's partnerships; thirty years later Goldman Sachs, the last holdout, sold itself to the public. The Big Eight accounting firms merged, scandalized, lost Arthur Andersen to a shredding machine, and then sold themselves anyway — this time to private equity. Now it is the lawyers' turn, pushed by artificial intelligence and pulled by institutional money, with the same rules, defectors, windfalls, and failures arriving on schedule. Drawing on court records, regulatory archives, and the firms' own numbers, The Last Partnership tells the story of how the professional partnership died twice, why it is dying a third time, who keeps the money — and who pays. 22 chapters, 206 pages..