White-Shoe Firm

A part of cool kid lingo, a white-shoe firm is a way to describe a firm that’s considered prestigious, usually in finance and law, but also sometimes in management consulting. White-shoe firms typically have blue-chip clients, and are old and established.

Why white-shoe? Like white gloves, the term white-shoe comes from back in the day. It’s likely white-shoe came from the 50’s, where graduates from Ivy League schools were wearing fancy-schmancy white Oxford shoes. Quite a departure from what you first probably thought of when thinking “white shoe,” which was a '90s white tennis shoe that gives anyone wearing it away as an American when abroad.

While “white-shoe” generally ascribes to claims of prestige, 2008’s financial crisis changed that a bit. Some white-shoe firms disappeared or got gobbled up by other white-shoe mega-firms. Since they were all exposed to those nasty mortgage-backed securities that were shiny on the outside but rotting on the inside, many white-shoe firms took a hit in reputation. People may not trust white-shoe firms like they did before, leaving room for smaller, newer firms and spunky entrepreneurs to take a shot at impressing their customers.