Despite remaining singularly difficult for outsiders to crack, New York is facing unprecedented challenges to its position as the world's legal capital. Suzanna Ring and Alex Novarese ask if Wall Street's legal elite can adapt to the times

"Who we are hasn't changed at all in some ways over the years. At a partners' meeting recently someone showed me a letter written by Paul Cravath in 1920 and it was almost the same format that we use today," reflects Cravath Swaine & Moore incoming presiding partner Allen Parker. "Really, it was almost identical."

Welcome to Manhattan, the most singular, individualistic, contradictory and competitive legal market in the world. As the rest of the global legal profession changes to reflect the impact of the post-Lehman Brothers world and the rise of finance hubs and economies in the east, it seems that many lawyers in Manhattan's hermetically sealed environment carry on as if little has changed.