by Bruce | June 19, 2011 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Legion are the topics lawyers don’t talk about, and they could perhaps be accurately summarized as “anything we’d prefer not to talk about,” but primary among them is the strength or weakness of their own firms’ business models. So...
by Bruce | May 23, 2011 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Jim Surowiecki, writing his regular column in The New Yorker, “The Financial Page,” wrote last week about innovation and why it seems to take hold in the US before it does elsewhere. Jim is a good read almost any week, but this is a column demanding...
by Bruce | May 8, 2011 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures
Normally I don’t refer to events stemming from my own experience in commenting on our industry-indeed, this is something of a first in the 8-year history of Adam Smith, Esq.-but what I want to talk about today is not self-referential and not even, really, about...
by Bruce | April 4, 2011 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Recently, I wrote about what I called the Tier 1/Tier 2/Tier 3 challenge for BigLaw. Briefly, the Tiers are: 1: What everyone aspires to. Think Wachtell, Skadden, Cravath, et al. Good luck emulating them, or convincing the market you’re their peers if...
by Bruce | February 18, 2011 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
A-ha! That, at least, was my reaction when reading the research report published this week in The Lawyer. Here are the top-line results, and then I’ll give you my reaction: The Lawyer hired a research firm called Motive to analyze lateral...
by Bruce | February 18, 2011 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Strategy
Tim Bratton, the general counsel of the Financial Times, has an interesting perspective on DLA Piper’s recently announced plan to revamp its client base. Here’s what that entails: All partners were given details of the framework last month as part of a bid...