L2 "discounted" his typical contingent fee for cases that go to trial by half. Still, since L1's fee was not discounted at all, the client's overall fee was unreasonable, and it seems problematic that the lawyers could collaborate like this, collect an excessive fee, and then escape responsibility because the fees weren't "shared" (through perhaps another rule may have been violated). I have left out a number of problems relating to the contingent fee agreement in the interests of brevity, but the "collection" issue I referred to relates to the fact that L2 contends the discount should apply only to compensatory damages and not punitives too.

Not missing anything, but isn't one of the purposes of the fee sharing rule to prevent the client from overpaying? Here, though each fee seems reasonable on its own, taken together, they are not. Yet because neither lawyer is responsible for the other's fee, the client gets taken advantage of. Seems troubling to me.

Aren't there important gender implications here? Isn't there a risk that these positions will become a type of "mommy track" or "pink ghetto," further inhibiting efforts to diversify the highest levels of the profession such as biglaw partnerships, the judiciary, etc.?

I did not mean to suggest that this type of lawyering started in the 1980s and 90s. Rather, my comment was that the writers who Piomelli focuses on did their writing in the 80s and 90s. More specifically, Piomelli has spent a good deal of time exploring the writings of Jerry Lopez, Lucie White, and Anthony Alfieri. Of course there are numerous examples of democratic lawyering, as Piomelli would define it, from the 1960s and 1970s. I'm sure that legal historians could come up with good examples from earlier decades as well.