by Bruce | December 17, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, one often heard the only semi-facetious phrase that “investment bankers are short-term greedy, but lawyers are long-term greedy.” One of the few exceptions to “short term greedy” on the I-Bank side of...
by Bruce | November 17, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
What’s going on at Reed Smith? Less than a week ago, they announced a roughly 20% cut in first-year associate salaries and hourly billing rates for the 50-odd lawyers joining the firm in January 2010. Here’s what they had to say about it (emphasis...
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...
