Some of the professions you mentioned like biglaw firms, bankers, management consulting are lucky to operate very high up the "value chain". Look at the Motorol

Some of the professions you mentioned like biglaw firms, bankers, management consulting are lucky to operate very high up the "value chain". Look at the Motorola-Google deal: $12,5b purchase prize, and a $2,5 billion fee that Google has to pay Motorola if the deal falls through for any reason. At these high dimensions the exorbitant bankers/lawyers fees are more like a rounding error. Of course you can say it is not "fair" in a higher sense that they get to capture this value, but to say they don't add value is unrealistic as well.