by Bruce | January 24, 2017 | Articles, Leadership, Strategy
The Premortem “The premortem is a great idea. I mentioned it at Davos and the chairman of a large corporation said it was worth coming to Davos for. The beauty of the premortem is that it is very easy to do. My guess is that, in general, doing a premortem on a plan...
by Bruce | January 18, 2017 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
From the foregoing analyses, it is apparent that the financial performance of law firms over the past 10 years has been driven by only one factor: rate increases. As we have seen, demand gowth for law firm services has been essentially flat, productivity has been...
by Bruce | January 17, 2017 | Articles, Recruiting
The following article was first published earlier this week in The Lawyer. We reproduce it here with their kind permission. Two days after the US Presidential election, the Atlantic magazine’s lead article, “The Trump Transition Begins,” opened with this short...
by Bruce | January 6, 2017 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Technology strategy
Q: What could put your firm at severe peril of failure that has nothing to do with clients, markets, bank debt, partner flight, infighting at the top, or any of the other usual suspects? A: A cybersecurity breach of your systems exposing confidential client info. Yes,...
by Bruce | January 2, 2017 | Articles, Leadership, Strategy
It’s become a commonplace to observe that Law Land has entered a period of negligible overall real growth in demand. (Five years ago I published Growth Is Dead: Now What?, which at the time prompted a fair amount of skepticism, a perspective on the book which...
by Bruce | December 8, 2016 | Articles, Leadership
Having been born in Manhattan, raised in a very close-in suburb which orbited in the firm grasp of The City and existed to serve it (it was the era when parents did that), and having lived and worked on this Island ever since college and law school, I plead guilty to...
by Bruce | November 30, 2016 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Strategy
You deem the following quote: Surprising, because your partners are totally game for whatever changes the rapidly evolving world is throwing at your firm; Utterly familiar—depressingly so; The ace you have up your sleeve as Managing Partner when it’s simpler to...
by Bruce | November 24, 2016 | About the Site, Articles
A Macy’s Parade balloon gets ready for its big annual moment–this all happens about a mile from the offices of Adam Smith, Esq.: Courtesy The New York Times.
by Bruce | November 19, 2016 | Articles, Leadership
The longer I’m a student of our industry, the more firms we observe outperforming and underperforming, and the more clients we engage with (several recently) on the issue of leadership succession planning, the more firmly I believe that leadership matters....
by Bruce | November 9, 2016 | Adam Smith Himself, Articles
Adam Smith was living in Edinburgh in October 1777 when a distraught friend brought news of the surrender of British General Burgoyne at Saratoga, exclaiming in the deepest distress that the British Empire was ruined. “There is much ruin in a nation,”...
