by Bruce | February 1, 2018 | About the Site, Articles, Profiles of Individuals
With deep sadness and a large dose of shock, I received word early this morning that Alan Hodgart, a friend and colleague, died suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday in London. I have taken the liberty of reproducing below an email I received later this morning from...
by Bruce | January 29, 2018 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Our friends at Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute asked us if we might share some thoughts with them on this year’s always enlightening and probing Report on the State of the Legal Market and they published our reflections a few days ago. We are delighted...
by Bruce | January 29, 2018 | Articles, Question of the Month
If you haven’t voted yet, polls are closing soon on the January 2018 Question of the Month (hint: why are law firms so bad at succession planning?). By “bad,” we mean four out of five seem to be ignoring the inevitable.
by Bruce | January 24, 2018 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Strategy
OK, that’s an uncivilized headline, so we can dignify matters by calling the NewLaw Revenue S-&$*(# the NewLaw multiplier. This multiplier, however, is not your friend. In economics the concept of “multipliers” is widely applied. Keynes famously argued in his...
by Bruce | January 10, 2018 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy
Janet Stanton co-authored this article. Corporate endurance should not be an end in itself. That said, in a very real sense, survival is the ultimate performance measure. –Ian Davis, Managing Director, McKinsey, writing in Reflections on Corporate...
by Bruce | January 4, 2018 | Articles, Leadership, Question of the Month
“The Church is always one generation away from extinction.”—Archbishop of Canterbury According to the 2018 Citi Law Firm Group Client Advisory, one-third of equity partners are at or approaching retirement age Citi’s 2018 Report also has this to say: “Looking ahead,...
by Bruce | December 29, 2017 | Articles, Branding, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy, Technology strategy
I’m coming to the conclusion that BigLaw is not one business, but two different businesses. Some firms (a minority) are in one business, but most firms are in another business entirely. Note what I am not saying: I’m not saying some firms have one business model and...
by Bruce | December 26, 2017 | Articles, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Practice Group Management, Strategy
In the spirit of generosity, which I hope is an active presence in your life but which is conspicuously abroad at this time of year, a regular reader granted me permission to share some of his reflections prompted by the recent column, “The End of...
by Bruce | December 16, 2017 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Partnership Structures, Strategy
Observant readers will have noted that I was in London all last week and so, as is our custom, a few observations about my time and conversations there and the state of the market. This has taken me awhile to compose because, frankly, I came away with a wide array of...
by Bruce | November 29, 2017 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management
More so of late, but for some time, we’ve been harboring the suspicion that the glory days of the high-leverage model are over. Could we be seeing the end of leverage? Of course, many management fads fashions tend to come and go, which is why we at Adam Smith, Esq....
