by Bruce | January 22, 2013 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Marketing
Permit me to paraphrase, and hopefully not mutilate, the lead from a recent article on strategy + business, the Booz & Co. (nee Booz Allen & Hamilton) online magazine: It’s a tough world …. New technologies … have permanently changed the [law firm...
by Bruce | November 16, 2012 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
As we come to the final installment of the Growth is Dead series, I hope the challenge I’ve laid out for us is clear. Excess capacity Stagnant demand Cut-throat or “suicidal” discounting Unprecedented pressure on prices, from all directions,...
by Bruce | November 5, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Practice Group Management, Strategy
In Part 8 in this series, we talked about “Now What?” in terms of three particular approaches you could take that were all, essentially, inward-focused and things you can pretty much control inside the firm’s four walls: acknowledge you have...
by Bruce | October 12, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Strategy
Lee Pacchia of Bloomberg Law recently interviewed me about some of the implications of “Growth is Dead.” Here it is: It’s 12 or 13 minutes but if you don’t have time for that we’ll be trying to cut it into bite-size snippets in the...
by Bruce | September 16, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Our third installment in this series addresses partner expectations. Here’s the problem: There’s about to be a collision with reality. Let’s start with some data. In the quarter century since the The American Lawyer first published the AmLaw 100,...
by Bruce | July 31, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures
Last week we published a column noting that today “discussion of incentives often begins from the false belief that only cash can influence behavior.” This remark—the heart of the piece in as few words as possible—prompted a regular reader to offer a...
