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...
by Bruce | May 31, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
Next in our series on a taxonomy of law firms are the capital-markets centric firms. If you think this moniker roughly translates to the classic New York white shoe elite, move to the head of the class. But, as much in our world at the start of the 21st Century,...
by Bruce | May 21, 2013 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
We humans like to put things in categories. And while we can get it plain wrong, or mix up two categories benignly or malignly, there’s no question our propensity for categorization—from friend or foe and food to poison, to Linnaeus, to the periodic table, to...
by Bruce | April 11, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
A few weeks ago I ran a column about “ReInvent Law,” an event in Silicon Valley in the first half of March, which presented some views about possible futures of BigLaw, most of which were, uh, challenging to those who think business as usual is a strategy....
by Bruce | April 9, 2013 | Articles, Business Models, Finance
I wasn’t going to write about the DLA over-billing allegations that came to light about 10 days ago because I didn’t think there was much to say except that they reflect badly on all of us, and on second thought that they reflect badly on all of us. But as...