by Bruce | March 15, 2007 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Earlier, I wrote about the 12th annual "Law Firm Leaders Forum" held in San Francisco last week, which I was able to attend as a guest of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, whose Chairman & CEO, Ralph Baxter, has been a sponsor of the event from the...
by Bruce | March 12, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Guy Beringer, a senior partner at Allen & Overy and someone you should be acquainted with if you want to follow the leading thinkers about the future of our profession, has written a thoughtful and desperately overdue piece on "Profit per equity partner as a...
by Bruce | February 28, 2007 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
If your firm is in a comfort zone where doing things 5% or 10% or even 15% better next year will suffice, stop reading because I’m going to be talking about transformation. Transformations may be confused with "managing change," but I’d...
by Bruce | February 16, 2007 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
"I’ve become accustomed in the last six years to facing the presumption that a profession cannot be a business in its true sense. It is quite a common assertion, made equally by a number from within our own profession. It is underpinned by the belief that...
by Bruce | February 14, 2007 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
Last month I had a chance to sit down with Pete Kalis, Chairman and Global Managing Partner of K&L Gates, for nearly two hours—and don’t think for a moment that we even scratched the surface of all we wanted to discuss. The pretext for our meeting was...
by Bruce | February 9, 2007 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Time to play "Name That Firm:" Here are some clues. “They are definitely the firm to watch,” said the managing partner of one leading New York firm recently overtaken by [Firm X] in the profit charts. “Even though they recognize the...