by Bruce | May 19, 2014 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
It has become bromidic to observe that we’ve moved from a linear growth market, ever up and to the right, to one of flat demand (did someone say, “growth is dead?”). We are, in short, in a battle for market share. Welcome to the rest of the economy....
by Bruce | May 5, 2014 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
I was at a conference of “Canadian Law Firm Leaders” outside Toronto earlier this week, and one of the highlights of the event, to my mind, was a talk by a representative of PeerMonitor, ThomsonReuters’ data analytics arm, which compared the recent...
by Bruce | March 27, 2014 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Turnabout. Today we have a sequel, in a yin-yang fashion, to our earlier column, “3 leading indicators of failure.” What might the equivalent indicators be for success, or outperformance? I’m not going to rehearse characteristics of successful firms...
by Bruce | March 21, 2014 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Can you remember a time when there was so much talk of more BigLaw firm failures? I can’t. Count yourself a believer or a skeptic (and there are hardcore advocates on both sides, including gleeful cheerleaders in the first camp and diehard deniers in the second...
by Bruce | February 14, 2014 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Recruiting, Strategy
When a large number of smart, accomplished, ambitious people seem to be behaving in a way that makes no rational sense, there has to be an irrational explanation. I’ve written and spoken before about my overall attitude towards aggressive lateral partner...
by Bruce | February 6, 2014 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Globalization, Strategy
The first installment in this series presented the background and basic ramifications of the proposal now pending in Congress to require law firms and other professional service firms with annual revenue over $10-million to adopt the accrual accounting basis and not...