by Bruce | December 1, 2004 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures
I’ve said it before, but it appears to be a source of chronic pain, so I will re-state my firm belief that, like pregnancy, you cannot be "half" lockstep and half not. The logical universe of choices is: Pure Lockstep: Fabulous if you can...
by Bruce | November 19, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
It has long seemed to me that the corporate-land debate over whether the CEO and the Chairman should be one person or two mirrors the law-land debate over the relationship between the Executive Director (or equivalent) and the Managing Partner. On the premise...
by Bruce | November 8, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
"The Industrialization of the Law Firm" is the ambitious, but fair, title of a piece by A. Harrison Barnes, Esq., founder of BCG Search. His conclusion?: "Today’s law firm environment is, in a sense, now being controlled by Adam...
by Bruce | October 3, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Partnership Structures
The American Lawyer’s annual associates satisfaction survey is here (full version) and here (summary ranking), and I’ll have some deeper analysis coming up. But for now, my initial reaction as an armchair statistician and amateur student of market...
by Bruce | September 12, 2004 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures
Getting partner compensation "right" is an issue I have, and will continue to, recur to. Why? Essentially because I believe that the two extreme models (the strict lockstep and the strict "eat what you kill") each works in only the...
by Bruce | September 2, 2004 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
One of the themes I recur to here is the indispensable role of leadership, and the ineffability of what makes a great leader. Occasionally a leader will simply "emerge" as the breathtakingly obvious choice, a sort of leader by acclamation (although...