by Bruce | September 23, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Globalization, Strategy
Along with Brexit and the apparently unsinkable Trump, another surprise has been brewing on the world stage and I hope you’ve noticed. Globalization—measured by the most fundamental and reliable metric, crossborder trade volume—has ended its ever upward...
by Bruce | September 19, 2016 | Articles
Yours truly will be moderating three webinars over the next six weeks or so on the EU’s requirements for data protection, security, and confidentiality. Our panelists will be highly qualified practitioners in these fields from firms such as K&L Gates,...
by Bruce | September 11, 2016 | Articles, Compensation, Finance
And now we come to the main event, the poisoned chalice bequeathed to us by Steven Brill. Let us proceed from the specific to the general, or if you prefer the structural to the symbolic. Are the reported numbers accurate? Silly question. We all know the answer to...
by Bruce | August 30, 2016 | Articles, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Partnership Structures, Strategy
As we enter strategy, planning, and retreat season in advance of 2017, a quick recap of some of the ways we help our clients that they consistently find most valuable. Strategy In today’s unforgiving marketplace, growing evidence points to the reality that firms...
by Bruce | August 17, 2016 | Articles, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Last year The American Lawyer introduced a new metric into its annual reports, “Profit per lawyer,” or PPL. Briefly, here’s what they said about it back in April, the second year they calculated it: Introduced last year, this metric is an alternate way of looking at...
by Bruce | August 11, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
Spoiler alert: If you’re looking for a hard-hitting expose of everything that’s wrong with RPL, look elsewhere. I’m on record as saying that RPL is the most telling metric we have, and I stand by that with permission to amend, or permission to put...
by Bruce | July 28, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
This is the first part in a series I will audaciously and perhaps misguidedly and at the risk of over-promising call “Metrics that might matter.” It’s prompted, as many new creative efforts in human life, by frustration with the status quo. Our...
by Bruce | July 22, 2016 | Articles
Some of you may have perceived a drop-off in the frequency with which I publish columns late this spring and early summer; your intuition would be correct. Don’t worry! I have not gone to the Hamptons (I’m not a Hamptons kind of guy) or anywhere else, for...
by Bruce | July 19, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
With the release a bit earlier this month of Legal Business’s annual “Global 100,” we have more data to scrutinize, should we care to. I’ll give you the highlights of the numbers here but even the most innumerate among us could not exactly...
by Bruce | July 4, 2016 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Ineffable, Strategy
With the world seemingly departing from the familiar for parts unknown almost anywhere one looks these days (the Middle East’s evidently insatiable crescendo of chaos, Brexit, the paranormal US election, even staid central bankers exploring the world of negative...