by Bruce | April 19, 2010 | Articles, Finance, Partnership Structures
As has been widely reported on law.com and Bloomberg, Dewey raised $125-million in a private placement of bonds, reportedly sold to institutional investors (mostly insurance companies) with maturities of 3–10 years. Rates paid were not disclosed. The firm was...
by Bruce | April 8, 2010 | Articles, Finance, Practice Group Management, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
Last week I had a chance to sit down with Howard Altarescu of Orrick, who I felt compelled to get to know better when he was the first, and still the only, person to know the answer to a question I like to pose, whenever I have the chance, to groups of lawyers...
by Bruce | April 7, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Strategy
The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law at p. 1 (1881) Of all the pithy and enduring observations that have been made about our profession (and, yes, our industry), this may be my all-time...
by Bruce | March 31, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Strategy
Did you ever consider that a society’s level of “market integration” (more in a moment) might be strongly and positively correlated with the society’s overall level of fairness? If you haven’t thought about that, time to catch up with the...
by Bruce | March 30, 2010 | About the Site, Articles
With humblest apologies: We moved Adam Smith, Esq. to a new hosting service last week. It will be far superior from our perspective (and hopefully from yours as well, in terms of enhanced responsiveness on the site), but suffice to say that no good deed...
by Bruce | March 19, 2010 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
A few days ago the juxtaposition of two articles, one in The Wall Street Journal and the other in The Times (UK), struck me as too rich not to point out. The WSJ wrote, in “Gap Widens Between Tech Richest and the Rest,” that: A handful of cash-rich...