by Bruce | June 22, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Partnership Structures, Strategy
A few days ago The New York Times published an op-ed by Mark Everson, who was commissioner of the IRS from 2003–2007. His thrust was that lawyers and accountants had stopped being watchdogs against business misconduct and instead have become enablers...
by Bruce | February 18, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
A-ha! That, at least, was my reaction when reading the research report published this week in The Lawyer. Here are the top-line results, and then I’ll give you my reaction: The Lawyer hired a research firm called Motive to analyze lateral...
by Bruce | February 9, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Partnership Structures, Strategy
I suppose that when it’s in The Wall Street Journal, it’s true. Well, it’s certainly true that attention must be paid. Which brings us to “Pay Gap Widens at Big Law Firms as Partners Chase Star Attorneys,” from the front page of...
by Bruce | February 1, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Practice Group Management
Here on Adam Smith, Esq., we’ve never devoted a lot of ink to work/life balance issues or, for that matter, to lawyers’ happiness with their jobs, stress levels, rates of depression/alcohol abuse/divorce (all of which, as is well-known, we over-index on),...
by Bruce | January 24, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy
Booz & Co.’s Strategy + Business published something of a primer called “Successful Strategic Planning” last month, and it’s worth a quick review for the distilled–if simple–wisdom it embodies. [For those of you who...
by Bruce | January 6, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
This is a tale of how this is not your father’s recession. About a year ago I read Reinhart and Rogoff’s This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, which ably–and depressingly–provides chapter and verse on how the aftermath of...