by Bruce | April 16, 2012 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Imagine a firm that allocates its talent, investment, and management focus consistently every year, making incremental changes but following the same “steady as she goes” broad pattern year after year. Imagine another firm that consistently evaluates the...
by Bruce | April 6, 2012 | Articles, Finance, Leadership
Q: What do these firms have in common? Allen & Overy Baker & McKenzie Bryan Cave Clifford Chance Cooley Dechert Dewey DLA Piper Fitzpatrick Cella King & Spalding Kramer Levin Kronish Lieb Linklaters Lowenstein Sandler Morrison & Foerster Orrick...
by Bruce | March 30, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Recruiting, Strategy
A Wharton School professor has analyzed the performance, and pay levels, of external hires vs. internal staff promotions. He used personnel data from a division of a major US investment bank for 2003—2009, and the characteristics of that talent market are remarkably...
by Bruce | March 23, 2012 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
The reaction to my last column on the developments at Dewey has been as strong as to any piece I can remember writing in the near-decade Adam Smith, Esq. has been around. But for those of you who may be feeling overdosed on Dewey coverage, events are not letting the...
by Bruce | March 16, 2012 | Adam Smith Himself, Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Two firms have this week received far more press attention than, one suspects, they counted on or quite know how to cope with: Our own industry’s Dewey LeBoeuf, and of course the iconic (good and bad sense) Goldman Sachs. Goldman Let’s take Goldman...
by Bruce | February 16, 2012 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
The title, “muscle memory,” I owe to Prof. Bill Henderson of Indiana/Maurer School of Law in Bloomington. Bill-and now I-use it to describe how the habits law firms learned during the boom years have carried over into the present reality, as inapt,...
