by Bruce | August 15, 2010 | Articles, Business Models, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy, Technology strategy
Technology can be a blessing and a curse and, while my feet are firmly planted in the former camp, that’s not why I’m writing what, I hope, you are about to read. Because it is about technology. I’m writing it for two reasons: I...
by Bruce | July 26, 2010 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Wouldn’t you suppose that inarguable goals are, well, inarguable? Welcome to law-firm land. This is a story about how we let our firms be knee-capped in fealty to principles of individual autonomy. Consider a hypothetical firm: It might be a boutique and it...
by Bruce | July 25, 2010 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
In times of accelerated turmoil such as those we’ve been living through and which appear likely to continue, to the eye’s visible horizon, it can be useful to return to first principles. So, herewith, a quick precis of Joseph Schumpeter’s famous...
by Bruce | July 20, 2010 | Articles, Leadership, Profiles of Individuals
The phrase “an American original” may strike you as overused, and I might agree, but I’d have to limit it to the narrow sense in which it may be applied to more people than deserve it. In other words, there aren’t enough of them. But today, we...
by Bruce | July 19, 2010 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
Outsourcing is here to stay. Whatever you call it, and whatever you think of its quality, clients have tasted of the fruit of the forbidden tree and they’re not going back. If document review can be conducted by Ivy League law school grads trained at white-shoe...
by Bruce | July 7, 2010 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
[Linklaters Managing Partner Simon] Davies said the firm was focused on overall profitability rather than its revenue, which has suffered due to the deflated M&A market with about 40 per cent of income generated by the corporate department. “Our...