by Bruce | January 8, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
One of the topics I’d like to devote more time to here on "Adam Smith, Esq." is marketing and business development. It matters. It’s harder than it looks. Some people seem preternaturally gifted at it and others seem to have no...
by Bruce | January 4, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
I got the news on my BlackBerry early this afternoon, but it’s all over the place now (WSJ, American Lawyer, Bloomberg [where yours truly is quoted]): The Dewey-Orrick merger is not to be. I’m sorry. I felt from the beginning it held great...
by Bruce | December 9, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
In general, I try to avoid staking out hard and fast positions. Partly, this is simply because I have a strong preference for spending my time analyzing and discussing issues where there really are two (or more) sides; they’re just plain more intrinsically...
by Bruce | December 8, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance
Last year, with base salaries for first-years at $125,000, associate bonuses at top New York firms ranged from $30,000 for first-years to $60,000+ for senior associates. This year, the news just broke that with base salaries for first-years at $145,000, associate...
by Bruce | November 6, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy, Technology strategy
Every once in awhile, you see an individual at a firm make a tremendous difference, and I’ve tried to make it a custom to celebrate the situations when I think I’ve identified such exemplars. Today I offer John Alber of Bryan Cave’s St. Louis office,...
by Bruce | October 25, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
I’ve written about "social network analysis" previously, and described some of the initial work in this area by Rob Cross, a faculty member at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. In a nutshell, "social network...