by Bruce | October 8, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Strategy
Late last month, as faithful readers know, I spent a week in Sao Paulo, serving the cause of market research for Adam Smith, Esq. Why Sao Paulo and what do I mean by market research? Sao Paulo is the largest city proper in North or South America: Over 11-million...
by Bruce | September 22, 2010 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, M&A, Marketing, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Attentive readers will know that I’m in Sao Paulo this week, where the talk of the town (well, at least the talk of The Bar) is this story which was reported yesterday morning in The Latin Lawyer:Any affiliations between international and Brazilian law firms...
by Bruce | September 15, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Partnership Structures
A few days ago The New York Times ran a story about how partners at Goldman Sachs “are made, and unmade,” with a fair amount of hyperbole about how the “secretive process” results in a small number of people being “chosen to receive this...
by Bruce | August 21, 2010 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Strategy
Copious have been the articles about BigLaw partners decamping to start their own firms, but when the story migrates from the legal press (among which I count law.com (comprising The American Lawyer, the National Law Journal, etc.) The Lawyer, LegalWeek, the...
by Bruce | July 26, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Wouldn’t you suppose that inarguable goals are, well, inarguable? Welcome to law-firm land. This is a story about how we let our firms be knee-capped in fealty to principles of individual autonomy. Consider a hypothetical firm: It might be a boutique and it...
by Bruce | July 4, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Globalization
Among the things we are definitively not into here at Adam Smith, Esq., is the question of ethnic or cultural identity, relative ethnic or cultural advantage or disadvantage, and historical prejudice for or against same. Frankly, we don’t give a ____....