by Bruce | June 22, 2013 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
At the conclusion of the final article in the “Law Firm Taxonomy” series (the article on Synergistic Super-Boutiques), I invite readers to take a survey offering your thoughts about the taxonomy structure in general, a few pointed questions about your firm...
by Bruce | June 20, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
Before we leap into the final category of firms in our taxonomy—”synergistic super-boutiques”—let’s recur to first principles and re-state what we’re trying to solve for. The issue is what do firms do to (in Darwinian order): (a) avoid...
by Bruce | June 16, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
For reasons that remain unclear to me to this day, back in college when I was majoring in economics, one of the fields I became fascinated with was that of industrial structure. Antitrust lawyers swim in the sea of industrial structure, whether or not they think of it...
by Bruce | June 13, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Boutiques are next up in our law firm taxonomy, and first a word about what I mean when I say “Boutiques,” because I may be using it a bit differently than you might assume in common parlance. In my nomenclature for purposes of this taxonomy, boutiques are...
by Bruce | June 10, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Strategy
We continue our taxonomy of law firms with a term I’ve borrowed shamelessly from the retail industry, “Category Killers.” In retail, these have traditionally been Big Box stores with exhaustive inventory and wickedly competitive prices on one deep...
by Bruce | June 4, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Our third installment in the “Law Firm Taxonomy” series addresses corporate-centric firms. With malice towards none and candor towards all, I must confess that I find this species the most problematic of all seven in our taxonomy. I’ll explain why in...