by Bruce | December 21, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." —Mark Twain, in a cable from London to US publishers, who had mistakenly printed his obituary. And so, for the entirety of my career, has it been the case with predictions of the demise of the...
by Bruce | December 8, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Leadership, Strategy
An unspoken, and certainly uncelebrated, aspect of the law firm associate personnel model is built-in attrition. "Built-in" can have two traditional meanings, and one new one: Traditional A: They wash out of their own accord, because of a variety of factors:...
by Bruce | November 27, 2008 | Articles, Globalization, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Twenty-six years ago Tom Peters and Robert Waterman published In Search of Excellence, and to some extent the genre of writing for business managers hasn’t been the same since. If for no other reason, it’s worth taking a moment to revisit...
by Bruce | November 23, 2008 | Articles, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Strategy
Consider a nonrandom selection of headlines from The New York Times, The Financial Times, andThe Wall Street Journal: Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk Citigroup Tries to Steady Stock Turmoil Continues in Banking Sector Citigroup: You Can’t Step Into the Same...
by Bruce | November 19, 2008 | Articles, Globalization, Law Schools, Leadership, Strategy
I’ll be attending the "Globalization of the Legal Profession" conference at Harvard Law School this Friday (21 November), put on by HLS’ Program on the Legal Profession. Here’s the agenda, with some notables on the program...
by Bruce | November 15, 2008 | Adam Smith Himself, Articles, Finance, Globalization, Strategy
Consider Detroit’s Big Three. Having made what turned out to be bad bets on over-investing in now shunned product lines, they’ve been conspicuously laying people off, downsizing, attempting to renegotiate credit lines, and...