INSIGHTS
Laterals As Immigrants
Much has been written recently about the need for law firms to integrate laterals more effectively. One need only search “law firm lateral integration” to find myriad resources providing tips for more successful integration, often accompanied by the cautionary tales...
The Aetna Plan for Business Health
A five step diagnostic process that could guide law firms into the future There’s a fascinating article in the December issue of the Harvard Business Review that ought to be required reading for the leaders and owners of the world’s leading law firms. Called Knowing...
Two Gifts for the Rule of Law
IRAP and Pro Bono Net deserve your help This is the season when we are all bombarded with requests for donations from worthy charities. Lawyers and the colleagues who work with them tend to be in a position where they can afford to be generous. Along with the legion...
The Empathy Imperative
In the computer-driven future, lawyers with strong social skills will still have a useful place alongside their machines. It’s not too late to learn how to relate. It’s been a fun fortnight watching the conventional wisdom swirl around the legal community. First there...
What do your clients want?
Engineers and theologians know how to find out. I listened with great interest last week to a presentation about a soon-to-be released survey of client attitudes. It was another parade of horribles for law firms: In-house departments were getting bigger, bringing more...
Is it time for you to go, Joe?
With the first wave of the Baby Boom about to turn 70, firms are asking the hard question, earlier and earlier. It’s the most famous retirement conversation in American legal history. In 1896 Justice Stephen Field, then in his thirty-third year on the U.S. Supreme...
Lessons from the Pricing Conference
Four suggestions for deepening law firm-client relationships The P3 conference, the annual intersection of pricing, project management, and, practice management went off last week in Chicago with its usual aplomb. It featured reviews of developments on the analytics...
The Path to a High Achieving Culture
It turns out that money isn’t the driver. It’s human nature, unleashed. I’m invited to several law firm partner retreats each year, usually as a speaker about trends in the marketplace. Before I go to the podium, I often get to hear the annual state-of-the-firm...
And a COO Shall Lead Them
Law firms need to understand their customers better. And COOs are well-positioned to lead these efforts. At big law firms, chief operating officers fall into three general groups. First, the enormously successful ones, who operate at the highest levels with the trust...
The World Without The AmLaw 100
Would the Big Law market really be different if it were free of the tyrannical profits per partner chart? It’s Am Law 100 season. My former colleagues at The American Lawyer have just published their biggest issue of their year, the annual scorecard of the 100 top...
Tales of an Unhappy Client: The Search for a Smarter Way to Bill
I knew better and that only makes this worse. Recently, I needed a lawyer to review an agreement. There was some vague language that made me anxious. So I called an old friend who recommended one of the partners at his big firm. The partner gave me good advice,...
The Business of (Big) LAW
Last month I gave a talk at a University of Pennsylvania Law School symposium on the business of large law firms. It’s a brief summary of some of the challenges in the market, plus a strong recommendation that firms and their clients start developing a “vocabulary of...