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 | 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 | May 31, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Technology strategy
Eight years ago, Marc Andreessen wrote that “software is eating the world.” Notably, he wasn’t specific about what geographies it had already consumed and where it was going next. Today I’d like to suggest that whether this software feast is...
by Bruce | May 9, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
We have written before about the profession’s seeming disconnect between how people perceive the typical law firm, in terms of lawyer career-level distribution, and reality. The perception, from history, is that of a relatively small number of partners on top...
by Bruce | April 1, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Latin America, Leadership, M&A, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Last week I spent three full days in Bogota, meeting with firms and colleagues, giving a talk at the always-wonderful “Gun Club,” and generally trying to soak up as much market intelligence as I could. Although I’ve been to Bogota several...