by Bruce | May 6, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
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...
by Bruce | March 29, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy, Technology strategy
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...
by Bruce | February 24, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership
We have a theory. Abandoning the office—as one Managing Partner put it, “like the fire alarm went off, everybody out now”—was the easy part. Going back will pose one of the most complex management challenges to law firms posed by the pandemic, a puzzle with many...
by Bruce | February 10, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Recruiting, Strategy
The following column is by Janet Stanton, Partner, Adam Smith, Esq. One of the most vexing issues for law firms is that of under-performing lawyers. And, let’s be clear from the get-go, we’re talking about chronic underperformance; not someone having, say, one bad...
by Bruce | February 1, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
When we ended Part 2 of this series, we had discussed the data showing (1) that the conventional wisdom about the AmLaw firms growing relentlessly to the sky was, uh, Fake News (h/t to Jae Um), (2) that the real picture is one of increasing segmentation among law...
by Bruce | January 27, 2021 | Articles, Build Back Better, Business Models, Client Relationships, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
What will differentiate winning firms from “mere” survivors is adaptability. As the Organization for Economic Development wrote in 2019: Resilience centers on the ability not only to resist and recover from adverse shocks, but also to “bounce back” stronger than...
