by Bruce | September 8, 2009 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Practice Group Management
How could the SEC have missed all the warning signs about Madoff? Understand that I don’t have a dog in this hunt. Although I’m a securities lawyer by training, I never worked at the SEC and, so far as I know, I’m not close to anyone who lost serious...
by Bruce | August 28, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Pop quiz: Which of these would be worse: Learning that, based on economic performance, lawyers in your practice group (including yourself) would be getting year-end raises smaller than average across the firm; or Feeling that you, individually, are being...
by Bruce | August 19, 2009 | Articles, Leadership, Strategy
Trying times call for a dose of perspective, and in “Leadership Lessons for Hard Times” McKinsey tries to provide just that. As they say in the preface, their goal is not to excavate the mistakes that led us to this crisis–quite enough ink has...
by Bruce | August 13, 2009 | Articles, Law Schools, Leadership
We have a dust-up between Fordham Law School, instigated or certainly escalated by its Dean, William Michael Treanor, and Reed Smith, which, a few days ago, canceled on-campus interviews scheduled for this week and next at Fordham. Unfortunately, students who had...
by Bruce | August 6, 2009 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy
Have you ever asked yourself why management education exists? Presumably, we know why law school exists (even the most curmudgeonly among us would admit the first year, and perhaps a fair portion of the second year, are an experience unlike any other, which, if...
by Bruce | July 28, 2009 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Back in March at the American Enterprise Institute annual dinner, Charles Murray gave a talk entitled “The Happiness of the People.” The managing partner of a large AmLaw firm recently brought it to my attention. The AEI’s...