by Bruce | November 10, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
My recent column, What Makes Laterals Run?, has generated a most rewarding level of reader feedback, worthy of an update to the original column. Reactions have literally come from around the world, and, with the permission of my correspondents (all of whom expect...
by Bruce | November 7, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Perhaps I don’t write as much as I should about lateral partners. I mean the economic phenomenon of lateral partner hiring, not gossip that much of the legal press seems to specialize in about specific “gotcha” movements of partners or small groups...
by Bruce | October 26, 2009 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures
According to the most recent fossil record discoveries, life on Earth dates back about 3,450-million years. But for about the first 85% of that time span, organisms were extremely simple, composed of individual cells, occasionally organized into colonies. Pretty...
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 | 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...
by Bruce | July 10, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
Last week I had a chance to sit down with Tomasz Wardynski, founding partner of Wardynski & Partners, based in Warsaw, which is now a firm of close to 250 people including 137 lawyers with 22 partners, of whom 9 are equity and 13 are salaried or limited partners....