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Legal professionals question the value of their work on a recurring basis. A well-known piece of research on the value of business lawyers’ services to firms is Ronald Gilson’s study, published in 1984 in the Yale Law Journal. Gilson’s study focuses on business acquisitions and presents a transaction cost analysis of value creation by lawyers for these transactions. As for some economic studies analyzing law, as well as Ronald Coase’s analysis of the nature of the firm, there is a hypothesis regarding the determination of prices. The contribution of lawyers, as conjectured by the analysis, is partly derived from this hypothesis. After a synthesis of the main elements of Gilson’s study, the paper presents its foundations and limitations.