by Bruce | March 8, 2009 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Just as I was thinking it was about time to publish a column on the topic of "leverage" at law firms (roughly speaking, the associate to partner ratio, although there’s more than one way to calculate something that people will call...
by Bruce | September 19, 2008 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Nothing less than a generational transformation of investment banking and the financial services industry at large. Its implications for, among other things, the economies of New York City and London, the structure of global capital markets, and our own dearly...
by Bruce | August 4, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
This is about the Cadwalader layoffs. But I won’t be piling on. I really won’t. Instead, I’d rather examine how the firm got to this unhappy pass and what managerial lessons it might hold in store for us. To understand what brought it to cutting...
by Bruce | July 18, 2008 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Does it strike you (as it does me) that the noise level surrounding "innovation" in law firms is reaching crescendo proportions? Just in the last few months, I’ve written about Legal OnRamp, Allen & Overy’s mini-conference on innovation here...
by Bruce | July 2, 2008 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Knowledge @ Wharton has an enlightening interview with William Weldon, CEO of Johnson + Johnson, on the challenges of leadership in a decentralized company. You may think the scale of J&J (120,000 employees, $61-billion in revenue, operations in dozens...
by Bruce | May 6, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Thinking of going to a two-tier (equity and non-equity) partnership? Or of increasing the non-equity ranks if (like 80% of the AmLaw 100) you’re already two-tier? I’m here to counsel extreme skepticism. And I’m tempted to be even more...