by Bruce | February 10, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Partnership Structures
Professor Bainbridge compares an article from The Economist showing a steady increase in Americans’ leisure time over the past 40 years with a story from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin reporting on how over-worked lawyers are: "The survey showed that how...
by Bruce | January 27, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
David Maister confesses: "I have spent twenty years trying to say all professions look similar and can learn from each other, but I’m finally prepared to concede that lawyers are different – and it has nothing to do with economics." In a piece...
by Bruce | January 27, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Questions for your managing partner, executive committee, and executive director: Is your firm as profitable as it could be? How does it measure up vis-a-vis its peer group? And what defines that "peer group," precisely? Do you...
by Bruce | January 18, 2006 | Adam Smith Himself, Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Just Plain Interesting, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Seventeen years before The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith published his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), nowadays a relatively neglected work which, to my mind, is nearly as astute, deserves far greater current recognition, and which not-incidentally puts pad...
by Bruce | January 14, 2006 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Regular readers will know that I’m a firm subscriber to the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is also why I try to exercise consistency in analyzing "dynamic" and not just "static" effects of a proposal. Clarification: The...
by Bruce | January 13, 2006 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Marketing, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Your firm is dedicated to client service as one of its pre-eminent goals, if not the absolutely highest priority, right? Not so fast. Do you have a lawyer serving full-time as "Client Services Advisor," serving as an ombudsman on behalf of the...