by Bruce | August 6, 2012 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
Not long ago, in their Soho offices, I had a chance to sit down with Mark Harris, CEO and Founder of Axiom, and a JD/BA grad of the University of Texas and former Ninth Circuit clerk and Davis Polk associate. To say that Mark has “views” on the state of...
by Bruce | July 31, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures
Last week we published a column noting that today “discussion of incentives often begins from the false belief that only cash can influence behavior.” This remark—the heart of the piece in as few words as possible—prompted a regular reader to offer 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 18, 2012 | Articles, Law Schools, Leadership, Recruiting
Comes word (prominently in the WSJ Law Blog) that the New York City Bar Association has formed a task force to “search for a solution” to the simply awful legal job market, in which only 55% of the Class of 2011 had found full-time positions requiring a...
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...