Drawing upon the theoretical concepts of reputation and social networking, this article\u27s main objective is to assess how investment banks choose external law firms. Using qualitative methods, I show that investment banks, to varying degrees, rely on internal counsel, procurement specialists, and boards of directors to decide which firm to select. When choosing a specific law firm for the first time, corporate decision-makers are likely to evaluate law firms based on intangible factors like reputation and the word-of-mouth referrals of their colleagues. In subsequent selections of a law firm, these factors are transplanted by past results. Firm expertise and cost considerations impact procurement decisions regardless of whether a law firm has been previously retained. Despite claiming that the individual lawyers providing the service is a more important selection criterion than the firm that employs those lawyers, investment banks seem to experience a degree of embeddedness that keeps them using the same firms time after time
