by Bruce | November 5, 2018 | Articles, Business Models, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer. –Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York,: Harper, 1st ed. 1954); Routledge, 2012, at p. 37 Urban legend has it that a Harvard Business School professor (who is never...
by Bruce | October 18, 2018 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
Sometimes when a corporation fails you could have seen it coming decades ago and so it’s not news. But rarely you could have seen it coming decades ago and it’s still news. Thus with Sears’ bankruptcy filing. “Attention, attention must...
by Bruce | October 7, 2018 | Articles, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Recent conversation with a veteran friend in the industry. He had correctly deduced from a recent column in these pages that I’m (re-)reading the all-time strategy classic Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin (Harvard Business Review Press: 2013) and...
by Bruce | October 1, 2018 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy, Technology strategy
By “only two strategies,” I mean what if there are only two general ways of creating a sustainable competitive advantage? I’ve read a lot of the business and management literature on strategy (believe me…) and this thought first surfaced when I...
by Bruce | September 21, 2018 | Articles, Finance, NewLaw, Strategy, Technology strategy
For those of you who may not have spent years as I did in and around Wall Street, “don’t fight the tape” may be an obscure phrase but its meaning is essentially self-evident. If the market (the “tape”) is strongly headed in one...
by Bruce | September 12, 2018 | Articles, Finance, M&A, Strategy
One thing you can count on when two law firms merge is that neither one buys the other. I use “buy” in its simple and core sense: Nothing is obtained in exchange for payment. No cash changes hands; no stock is exchanged, no assets are purchased or...
by Bruce | August 27, 2018 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Innovative Managing Partners, Leadership
Psychologists call us humans, among other things, “meaning-making machines.” We’re always looking for the reason why, the cause for the effect, the coherent narrative that pulls it all together and ties it up neatly. So far so good, but of course...
by Bruce | August 14, 2018 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Client Relationships, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy, Technology strategy
We often ask law firms, “Who’s your competition?” The single most frequent response we get is, “Well, no one, really.” This is delusion on stilts. Every business, I would venture to extend that to any human organization, has competition,...
by Bruce | August 5, 2018 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
It can be easy to remember the past Golden Era for BigLaw: Say, the decade preceding the 2008 Great Financial Meltdown. And you would not be wrong to recall it that way. No indulgence in nostalgia is required; that decade constituted an unheard-of run of economic...
by Bruce | July 30, 2018 | About the Site, Articles, Book Reviews
In the spirit of reader service, for those of you who might find the summer season has graced you with a bit more leisure time than usual, and on the hunt for a good book, your editor (that would be me) will list and briefly describe what I have been or am reading...
