Last week, the partners at Howrey, LLP, voted to dissolve the 55-year-old firm. Most of the top brass have already been snatched up by other firms like Winston & Strawn and Baker Botts. Those who have yet to find new jobs will supposedly be paid until May 9. (Yet eerily, the firm’s website is still up, still looking like it’s open for business, listing partners in London and elsewhere who have long since fled, still looking like the firm that once pulled in more than half a billion dollars a year.)

Howrey CEO Bob Ruyak explained to the Wall Street Journal how and why the firm disintegrated (the steep decline in contingency fees, competition, and the resulting mass exodus of talent). The Washingon Post‘s Steve Pearlstein offers his own postmortem: