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...
by Bruce | October 22, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Associate retention/attrition may have always been a chronic problem for the industry, but is it only me or is the situation actually deteriorating? Annual attrition rates of 25% at AmLaw 50 and UK 50 firms are now widely reported, and as I previously noted one...