Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.3 | The History Cooperative

Craftsmanship and Character: A History of the Vinson & Elkins Law Firm of Houston, 1917-1997. By Harold M. Hyman. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. xx, 658 pp. $60.00, isbn 0-8203-1973-2.)

Granted unusual free access to Vinson & Elkins (V&E) records, Harold M. Hyman has crafted a history that can serve as a model for future studies. Rather than focusing on major cases and clients, Hyman emphasizes the development of V&E's organizational structure and legal services. There is more detail and repetition than some readers may want, but the book never loses thematic focus, and Hyman leavens the organizational history with well-told stories and a sensitivity to the role of business and professional cultures and of individual personalities. 1

V&E began as a two-man partnership in 1917 and has grown steadily to over five hundred associates and partners with multiple branch offices. Hyman tells two major stories: the firm's success during its first four decades in carving out a niche for itself doing the legal work of independents and wildcatters in the booming Texas oil industry and its successful, albeit gradual and conflicted, transformation since the 1950s into a modernized law firm serving larger and more diverse clients in regional, national, and international arenas. . . .

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