by Bruce | March 13, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Well, that’ll teach me… The volume of commentary following my publication earlier this week of “The Great De-Leveraging” has been unprecedented. Depending on your attitude, that is either deeply gratifying or almost overwhelming. As one who...
by Bruce | March 8, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Just as I was thinking it was about time to publish a column on the topic of "leverage" at law firms (roughly speaking, the associate to partner ratio, although there’s more than one way to calculate something that people will call...
by Bruce | February 27, 2009 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
The Latham news is of course all over the place: The WSJ Law Blog, Above The Law, The AmLaw Daily, LegalWeek, and etc. The figures are, frankly, grim: 190 associates laid off, or about 12%; 250 paralegals and staff, or about 10%; but As of this writing, no...
by Bruce | February 23, 2009 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
America has been through many crises and challenges before, far worse than what we’re experiencing today. Need I mention (keeping it to economics and not including wars), the hardships and deprivations brought on by the Civil War, the long depression of...
by Bruce | February 20, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management
When non-lawyers ask what’s happening in the world of law these days (i.e., what ATL is covering), our first response is usually one word: layoffs. It’s been a dominant theme in our coverage since the fall. —Above The Law (today) While I might...
by Bruce | February 13, 2009 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Within the space of 15 minutes late this afternoon I got calls from both Bloomberg News and The American Lawyer asking me what was going on with all the layoff announcements hitting the wires today. So this was not your ordinary day, and even though "Adam Smith,...
