by Bruce | November 10, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
My recent column, What Makes Laterals Run?, has generated a most rewarding level of reader feedback, worthy of an update to the original column. Reactions have literally come from around the world, and, with the permission of my correspondents (all of whom expect...
by Bruce | November 7, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Perhaps I don’t write as much as I should about lateral partners. I mean the economic phenomenon of lateral partner hiring, not gossip that much of the legal press seems to specialize in about specific “gotcha” movements of partners or small groups...
by Bruce | October 26, 2009 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures
According to the most recent fossil record discoveries, life on Earth dates back about 3,450-million years. But for about the first 85% of that time span, organisms were extremely simple, composed of individual cells, occasionally organized into colonies. Pretty...
by Bruce | October 9, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
Hogan & Hartson/Lovells? As amply reported (Legal Week, The National Law Journal, The Lawyer), the firms are in merger talks and, since no one is remotely denying the reports, we can only assume it’s all quite for real. We’ll get to what we think it...
by Bruce | August 28, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Pop quiz: Which of these would be worse: Learning that, based on economic performance, lawyers in your practice group (including yourself) would be getting year-end raises smaller than average across the firm; or Feeling that you, individually, are being...
by Bruce | August 13, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Practice Group Management
Among the phrases, and phenomena, that now seem so hopelessly “last August” is that of the fabled Work-Life Balance. (“So last August” has been a phrase around town for several months now, referring especially to examples of wretched...