by Bruce | March 22, 2012 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Leadership, Marketing
From Allen & Overy’s 2011 Annual Review, which I happened to pick up in a visit to one of their offices last week, come some thoughtful essays you wouldn’t expect to find were it the usual firm’s “higher, faster, bigger, stronger, better,...
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 | March 9, 2012 | Articles, Law Schools, Leadership, Recruiting
The National Law Journal just published a wealth of information, derived from NALP statistics, about which law schools send the greatest number of their graduates to NLJ 250 firms as first-year associates, and-this is the really fun part-how many graduates of those...
by Bruce | February 21, 2012 | Articles, Compensation, Leadership, Strategy
In the Legal Intelligencer, the reporter Gina Passarella has published Revenue Race, and a companion piece, which basically find the challenge that “a mature US legal market coupled with a dip in demand for legal services” poses to the demand for revenue...
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,...
by Bruce | February 13, 2012 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
The preliminary Citi 2011 report is out and it’s time for a bit of reading between the lines. In particular, we like to focus less on what’s said than on what is studiously elided. Here’s the top line: For law firms, 2011 was a tale of two years....