by Bruce | June 14, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Let’s open this third and final installment with the #1 question we’re most frequently asked about this model: Can one firm excel at being both a Maroon and a Gray? No. Or in the very best of circumstances, it’s extremely hard to do and it’s...
by Bruce | June 9, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
At the end of installment #1, we promised you we’d discuss what happens if you apply Porter’s famous “five forces” to the Maroons and the Grays. Shall we? Insight from Porter’s “Five Forces” In 1979, Harvard Business School Professor Michael...
by Bruce | July 16, 2023 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategic Client Management, Strategy
It has been four years since we initially published our series laying out a law firm market segmentation model we called the “Maroons & The Grays,”[1] and four years on is none too soon for an update. No model is, or should be, static, and as we have worked with...
by Bruce | June 3, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Partnership Structures, Strategy
We have never subscribed to the belief that law firms operate in a fundamentally undifferentiated industry—that each law firm competes with every other law firm—and that given the magic alignment of expertise, cost, and personal rapport, clients’ choice of law firms...
by Bruce | June 26, 2026 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Client Relationships, Generative AI, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
In the past we have written that for law firms scale—number of partners and total lawyers, number of offices, total revenue, &c.—doesn’t really matter. The distinctions that clients care about center around specific domain/practice area expertise, track record, a...
