by Bruce | June 6, 2006 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
In the past 24 hours, I’ve spoken with the managing partner/chairs of two AmLaw 50 firms, and I heard something from each that I hear altogether too rarely: They know what their firms are not going to do, or be. The first put it in these terms (I...
by Bruce | June 2, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
A regular reader (partner at an AmLaw 25 firm and, coincidentally, a fellow Princetonian) writes: "You write about lockstep and eat-what-you-kill, but you don’t say a word about “completely black box” compensation. There are some firms in which...
by Bruce | June 2, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, M&A, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Early last week I interviewed Eric Sivin, a founder and principal of Sivin Tobin Associates, a legal search and recruiting firm based here in New York. (And yes, that is their ad that has been running in the right-hand column of my site for a couple of months...
by Bruce | May 30, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
An "evergreen" topic here at "Adam Smith, Esq.," because one despairs to find a durable equilibrium solution for it, is the perennial debate over "eat what you kill" (EWYK) vs. lockstep compensation systems. Each has its place in the...
by Bruce | May 28, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
Usually we draw lessons from other law firms, or (even more usually) from the massive managerial literature of corporate America, which, as regular readers know, I have always believed offers us a relatively untapped stock of wisdom (and cant, to be sure) on managing...
by Bruce | May 20, 2006 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
When I began practicing in New York in the early 1980’s there were still vestiges of the "white shoe"/Jewish law firm divide; indeed, Breed, Abbott & Morgan, where I started, and Shea & Gould, where I also worked, were almost caricatures of...
