by Bruce | January 2, 2010 | Articles, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
As we embark on a brave new year, I thought it condign treatment of 2009 and what lies beyond to spend a few moments on the broader view, and, more specifically, what industries may and may not survive the post-Internet, and more broadly the post-digitalization of...
by Bruce | December 24, 2009 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Many have been the descriptors proposed for the period we’ve been living through since about the middle of 2007, but few strike me as more apt than “turbulence.” Why? Turbulence implies unconscious, or at least unintended, forces at work causing the...
by Bruce | December 17, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, one often heard the only semi-facetious phrase that “investment bankers are short-term greedy, but lawyers are long-term greedy.” One of the few exceptions to “short term greedy” on the I-Bank side of...
by Bruce | December 9, 2009 | Articles, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
Hasn’t the last year and a half been a horrible nightmare? Aren’t you sick and tired of our fallacious infatuation with the “free market”? Maybe we should bring back Glass-Steagall, reinforce Sarbanes-Oxley, create an uber-regulator for the...
by Bruce | November 28, 2009 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy
For the second installment in our series on Law Firm Business Models, we turn to boutiques. Boutiques, as a player on the landscape of industrial structure, are a familiar character. Boutiques, in fact, exist in countless industries, and seem capable of thriving in a...
by Bruce | November 25, 2009 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Here the first in what I plan will be a series on Law Firm Business Models. Today’s topic is Regional Firms, and the focus of essentially every one of the columns in this planned series will be a discussion of whether the business model under examination is...