by Bruce | August 9, 2012 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, Strategy
LegalWeek has released their annual “UK Top 50” ranking and it paints a rosy picture of strong revenue and profit growth in the teeth of global economic headwinds. Specifically: Total revenue of the Top 50 hit £12.96-billion (US$20.25-billion) This was a...
by Bruce | July 25, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures
ITN (a British-based independent news service) recently published a poll finding trust in the financial sector is at an all-time low, with just 10% of respondents believing bankers tell the truth. This puts bankers even lower than journalists and politicians. Yet if...
by Bruce | July 16, 2012 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
If you think your firm faces new strategic challenges in the wake of the Great Reset, imagine if you had been running a global bank in 2009, where the entire regulatory, interest rate, competitive, and customer environments had shifted abruptly and substantially...
by Bruce | July 9, 2012 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, Strategy
Let me line up side by side for you some very current perspectives on the larger issues facing BigLaw. The impressively thoughtful (and articulate) Dr.. George Beaton wrote less than a month ago, in Without re-invention firms’ profits will plunge in line with...
by Bruce | June 18, 2012 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Recruiting, Strategy
Three years ago I published What Laterals Need to Know: A Modest Proposal, which essayed the thought that firms had an obligation to disclose certain information about the firm in advance to a prospective lateral partner. (I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend...
by Bruce | June 12, 2012 | Articles, Finance
We don’t write about legal doctrine very much—make that hardly ever—but every once in awhile a ruling, precedent, or line of cases strikes such a discordant note that it’s irresistible to question the rationale behind it. We come to praise Jewel or to bury...