by Bruce | January 1, 2014 | Articles, Compensation, Leadership, Recruiting
Turnabout. I recently wrote about how to demoralize, discourage, and disenchant top talent. This is about how to retain that talent. Like the prior column, this one is based on one of the top columns of the year from Strategy + Business, the Booz & Co....
by Bruce | December 24, 2013 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Recruiting
That law firms are all about talent is a commonplace. Too bad that so many lawyers seem to have an uncanny knack for knocking the wind out of the sails of the most spirited contributors. I dare you to tell me that you don’t recognize at least a few colleagues...
by Bruce | December 10, 2013 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership
A few highlights from The American Lawyer’s just-released annual law firm leaders survey: Five years in to the Great Reset, the way clients buy legal services has settled into a new normal: In-house capabilities are expanding; Price/fee pressure is relentless;...
by Bruce | November 25, 2013 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership
The other night I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the FT’s Innovative Lawyers 2013 (US) awards ceremony at the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue and 42nd branch. (The report was published here the next day in the paper, and you can...
by Bruce | November 20, 2013 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
One of the thorniest and most convoluted issues any leader has to deal with is telling senior-level underperformers that they’d be better off elsewhere. It calls on every skill in the manager’s trick-bag, from financial analysis to subtler cultural and...
by Bruce | November 14, 2013 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
The always intrepid Lee Pacchia of Bloomberg Law invited me to come by and talk about the quarterly reports on the State of BigLaw just released by Citi Private Bank and Wells Fargo’s law group. We also got off on the topic of whether lawyers can really be...