by Bruce | March 8, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
A major article appears in this month’s American Lawyer, penned by Ben Heineman, most famously ex-GC of GE, and David Wilkins, Harvard Law professor. Both are now deeply involved in HLS’s Program on the Legal Profession, whose stated mission is "to...
by Bruce | February 25, 2008 | Articles, Finance, Practice Group Management, Strategy
So once it’s in The Wall Street Journal it must be a real phenomenon, right? I’m referring to today’s "Why BigLaw Is Bracing for a Leaner 2008," along with its companion piece on the WSJ Law Blog. A sampling of the evidence adduced behind...
by Bruce | February 22, 2008 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management
Tuesday I attended one of the regular lunch-time meetings of the ABA’s "Back to Business Law" project which describes itself as "a pilot project sponsored by the ABA Section of Business Law, [to] provide periodic continuing legal education...
by Bruce | February 18, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
While we’re all obsessing over the sub-prime crisis, the credit crunch in general, the housing market’s retrenchment, the inability to mark to market CDO’s, the devilish tendency of "liquidity" to be robust when you don’t need it and...
by Bruce | February 12, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, M&A, Practice Group Management, Strategy
By now it’s been amply reported that 55 of Anderson Kill’s 126 lawyers are leaving for Reed Smith, effective February 1. In classically hyper-ventilating fashion, the Brits (Legal Week) reported that Reed Smith "has swooped, …taking...
by Bruce | February 7, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
It’s been nearly a decade since McKinsey published the seminal article, The War for Talent, but many of its abiding observations remain true today and indeed are worth revisiting. What they found ten years ago started from the implacable demographic reality that...