101 Lawyers: Attorney Appearances in Twitter v. Musk

Abstract

101 lawyers is a lot, especially for a case that never went to trial or saw a dispositive motion filed. Although Twitter v. Musk did not pan out as the corporate trial of the century, the attorney-appearance record it set still merits some moment. Twitter was a strange case across many dimensions and its legal staffing, at least in headcount terms, could hardly be said to be representative of other litigation. But its rapid beginning and end and high lawyer count offer a unique opportunity to think about the legal profession in the context of a single case.

With the docket now substantially complete, I use a hand-collected dataset of attorney appearances in Twitter v. Musk as a case study. This Essay contributes to several active conversations regarding the legal profession. First, to what extent does the gender gap in the profession persist? Second, to what extent does credentialing appear in legal hiring and staffing? And third, how does state-based regulation of the profession affect clients’ hiring and firms’ staffing decisions? In considering these questions, I find that these two sophisticated parties—each with tens of billions of dollars on the line—ended up at remarkable parity in terms of experience levels, rank, and educational credentials of their legal teams. The parties diverged, however, in terms of gender and clerkship experience.

Keywords: mergers and acquisitions, professional responsibility, attorney regulation, Delaware

JEL Classification: K12, K22, K41