John Oller, author of White Shoe, credits Paul Drennan Cravath with creating the model in the early 20th century, which was adopted by virtually all white-shoe law firms, fifty years before the phrase white shoe came into popular use.
[1] The Cravath System has been adopted by many leading law firms,[2][3] management consulting firms, and investment banks in the United States.
Paul Cravath built a reputation handling complex lawsuits for the new electrical industry.
Devising the Cravath System, he enlarged the law office and professionalised it by establishing full-time librarians, a recruiting system focused solely on the highest-ranked law schools, and partners who specialized.
[4] Robert Swaine describes the fundamentals of the Cravath System in the beginning of Volume 2 of the history of the Cravath firm.