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Summer Reading List 2025
In keeping with our tradition at Adam Smith, Esq. of publishing a summertime diversion in the form of a selective list of what we’ve been reading lately, herewith the 2025 installment: Fiction, nonfiction, and one millennia-old classic. Our hope is that you might find... read more +The US is a Net (Im/Ex?)Porter of Law?
For the armchair economists in the crowd, the geopolitically curious, or faithful leaders of law firms wondering whether they should plant a, or more, flags abroad, how would you instinctively answer that question? Does the US sell more legal services abroad than it...
Legal Services “Intensity” Around the Globe
We find ourselves from time to time wondering about many things: Will Moore's Law ever hit a wall? When will the last print edition of The New York Times be published? Could Lord General Cornwallis have escaped the French/American pincer movement at Yorktown and gone...
Earnings Season: What Would the Haruspex* Say?
Every year around this time—earnings season for law firms—we’re fond of saying, “Averages mislead.” When the trade media report that, overall the entire industry had a great year, or the AmLaw 50/100/200 had a great year, or regional middle market players (fill in the...
Book Review: “BigLaw: Money & Meaning in the Modern Law Firm”
Across my desk a few weeks ago came BigLaw: Money & Meaning in the Modern Law Firm by Mitt Regan and Lisa Rohrer (U. Chicago Press: 2021). (I have known Mitt, a law Professor at Georgetown, for over a decade, and consider him a friend, as well as one of the most...
You’ll Save $$ on Real Estate: So??
Universally, everyone is hearing that firms plan to make significant cuts in real estate spend starting, well, starting as soon as the next office lease comes up for renewal. How “substantial” might those cuts be? You would think a massive and sophisticated industry...