by Bruce | June 2, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
A regular reader (partner at an AmLaw 25 firm and, coincidentally, a fellow Princetonian) writes: "You write about lockstep and eat-what-you-kill, but you don’t say a word about “completely black box” compensation. There are some firms in which...
by Bruce | June 2, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, M&A, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Early last week I interviewed Eric Sivin, a founder and principal of Sivin Tobin Associates, a legal search and recruiting firm based here in New York. (And yes, that is their ad that has been running in the right-hand column of my site for a couple of months...
by Bruce | June 1, 2006 | Adam Smith Himself, Articles, Compensation, Finance, Just Plain Interesting
From the Journal of Economic Education (hat tip to "Truth on the Market") comes the first study I’m familiar with examining whether the choice of undergraduate major has any effect on a lawyer’s career earnings. And guess what? If you...
by Bruce | May 30, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
An "evergreen" topic here at "Adam Smith, Esq.," because one despairs to find a durable equilibrium solution for it, is the perennial debate over "eat what you kill" (EWYK) vs. lockstep compensation systems. Each has its place in the...
by Bruce | May 28, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Usually we draw lessons from other law firms, or (even more usually) from the massive managerial literature of corporate America, which, as regular readers know, I have always believed offers us a relatively untapped stock of wisdom (and cant, to be sure) on managing...
by Bruce | May 19, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
I recently had the chance to interview Chris Marston, founder and CEO of Exemplar Law Partners, LLC, based in Boston, which has been open for business for all of about 90 days. To say that Chris is embarked on an ambitious attempt to rethink the practice of law,...