I have had reason to look back on some foundational scholarship in LLCs recently, and one article really stood out for me. Larry Ribstein’s The Deregulation of Limited Liability and the Death of Partnership. It’s another snow day with kids, so I haven’t had a lot of time to delve into the thoughts this raised for me, so I’ll let Larry’s words speak for themselves.  Keep in mind this is from 1992:  

The popularity of the partnership form of business1 indicates that an organizational form in which some owners can be held personally liable for the firm’s debts is efficient for many firms. This could be because, for many firms, individual liability reduces the firm’s credit costs more than it increases owners’ risk-bearing, monitoring, or other costs. This Article, however, suggests an alternative explanation: the partnership form is attractive for many firms on the margin only because of the regulatory costs of limited liability, including double corporate taxation and limitations on organizational form.

Recent developments provide a valuable opportunity to test this explanation. Many lawyers and legislators have become interested in a new limited liability business form, the “limited liability company” (LLC), that lets firms adopt limited liability without many of the tax and other costs that once attended limited liability. If this Article’s regulatory explanation of partnership is correct, the partnership form of business will greatly diminish in importance. After a transitional period, partnership will survive, if at all, as a residual form for firms that have no customized agreement.