by Bruce | May 15, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Partnership Structures
In doing some research about large law firm dissolutions (Brobeck, Coudert, Finley Kumble, Shea & Gould, etc.), I came across a November 15, 1983 article from The New York Times archives entitled "Business and the Law: Fall in Income at Big Firms." Join...
by Bruce | May 10, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
The American Lawyer asks "Is Shedding Partners the Right Way to Improve Profitability?," which is the wrong question—albeit a nice headline for a relatively substantive article. First, what phenomenon are they addressing? The phenomenon is...
by Bruce | May 8, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
The American Lawyer’s famous AmLaw 100 has been out for about a week now, and it’s time to release some preliminary number-crunching. I’ll also have some more qualitatively analytic pieces in the next week or so, but here are the hot data dots for...
by Bruce | April 20, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Nobody likes to be the weatherman when the forecast is for wind-driven freezing rain, and far be it from me to aspire to that dour post. But based on some indicators such as the Hildebrandt/Citigroup Private Bank March 2007 Client Advisory, which reports that...
by Bruce | April 17, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
In 1999, Reed Smith’s 610 lawyers generated $168-million in revenue, from 14 offices in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. At the start of 2007, its 1,500 lawyers are on track to do $900-million in revenue, from 21 offices across the US from California to...
by Bruce | April 10, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
If you’ve never run across Arnie Jacobs, a partner at Proskauer in New York, and a "dean of securities law," I hope the stars may align that you will. Early in my career as a lowly associate at Shea & Gould, I had the privilege of working...
