by Bruce | December 8, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Leadership, Strategy
An unspoken, and certainly uncelebrated, aspect of the law firm associate personnel model is built-in attrition. "Built-in" can have two traditional meanings, and one new one: Traditional A: They wash out of their own accord, because of a variety of factors:...
by Bruce | November 27, 2008 | Articles, Globalization, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Twenty-six years ago Tom Peters and Robert Waterman published In Search of Excellence, and to some extent the genre of writing for business managers hasn’t been the same since. If for no other reason, it’s worth taking a moment to revisit...
by Bruce | November 19, 2008 | Articles, Globalization, Law Schools, Leadership, Strategy
I’ll be attending the "Globalization of the Legal Profession" conference at Harvard Law School this Friday (21 November), put on by HLS’ Program on the Legal Profession. Here’s the agenda, with some notables on the program...
by Bruce | November 11, 2008 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
Our texts for today come from (in inappropriate order) the New Testament, as it were, and Peter Kalis, the chairman of K&L Gates: "The metaphysical question is whether you can have bulge-bracket Wall Street firms without Wall Street," says Kalis....
by Bruce | October 22, 2008 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
We are surely living in times of manic-depressive equity and fixed-income markets ("We’ve made the future safe for Western financial institutions!" "No, we haven’t!). New York City itself can seem to be suffering from one gigantic case...
by Bruce | October 14, 2008 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Practice Group Management
Making the rounds is a presentation by Sequoia Capital on "startups and the economic downturn," which constitutes a sort of come-to-Jesus meeting for that storied VC firm’s portfolio companies. It tells a tale of radical gloom, with...