by Bruce | December 3, 2004 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
The American Lawyer is out with its annual survey of AmLaw 200 leaders and they are, as Aric Press succinctly puts it, "a confident bunch." And why shouldn’t they be? The heck with 9/11 and the heck with the 2000 bubble melt-down: 88%...
by Bruce | December 1, 2004 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures
I’ve said it before, but it appears to be a source of chronic pain, so I will re-state my firm belief that, like pregnancy, you cannot be "half" lockstep and half not. The logical universe of choices is: Pure Lockstep: Fabulous if you can...
by Bruce | November 8, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
"The Industrialization of the Law Firm" is the ambitious, but fair, title of a piece by A. Harrison Barnes, Esq., founder of BCG Search. His conclusion?: "Today’s law firm environment is, in a sense, now being controlled by Adam...
by Bruce | October 30, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
The Global 100 for 2004 is out, courtesy of our friends at The American Lawyer. First, the chart of revenue by rank: This has what statisticians call "a long tail"—and this is only the top 100 firms, recall; imagine what it would look like for...
by Bruce | October 25, 2004 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy, Technology strategy
Elaborating on the immediately previous post, the curve on the graphic is…[drum-roll, please]—a demand curve, our Econ. 101 friend. (High $$$ price means little demand ["bet the company"], low price means high demand...
by Bruce | October 22, 2004 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Marketing, Technology strategy
If "three anecdotes constitute a trend," as the possibly apocryphal credo of journalists has it, then I am here to announce a trend: Corporations are beginning to apply professional purchase-manager techniques and metrics to selecting and overseeing...